The far-right party topped a German state election for the first time, but three seats still stand between it and power.
MAGDEBURG — Voters in Saxony-Anhalt handed Alternative for Germany a result no German state had ever delivered. On Sunday they made the far-right party first, by a crushing margin. They also left it three seats short of governing alone.
Preliminary official results put AfD at 43.8 percent of the vote, more than double its 20.8 percent in 2021. The Christian Democrats, who have led the state since 2002, crashed to 17.2 percent — their worst result here on record. Turnout hit 77.8 percent, the highest since reunification.
AfD takes 39 of 83 seats in the Magdeburg Landtag. Forty-two are needed for a majority. SPD, Greens and The Left each have eight seats. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance scraped in with 5.3 percent and five seats. The FDP, a partner in the outgoing government, fell out of parliament.
A first-place finish, not a government
Ulrich Siegmund, the 35-year-old AfD lead candidate, called the night “sensational” and said voters had given his party a mandate to govern. National co-leader Tino Chrupalla declared that Siegmund “will be the new premier.” Alice Weidel called the result historic.
Mainstream parties still refuse to govern with AfD. The state’s domestic intelligence service classifies the Saxony-Anhalt branch as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization. That “firewall” now faces its hardest test. AfD has already begun courting individual CDU lawmakers. Siegmund has also threatened new elections if no path to power opens.
CDU state premier Sven Schulze conceded that his party no longer holds a governing mandate. Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the result had shaken his party “to its very foundations.” He ruled out working with AfD and said giving up was not an option. Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski called the outcome “a very worrying sign.”
Why the east broke so hard
AfD finished first in all 218 municipalities. About 83,000 former CDU voters switched. Anger at Berlin, migration, and a stagnant economy drove the surge. An ARD survey found 87 percent of voters in the state unhappy with Merz’s federal government.
The arithmetic is brutal. CDU, SPD, Greens, The Left and BSW together hold 44 seats — the only majority that excludes AfD, and only if all five agree. That coalition would be unprecedented. Blocking AfD without it may prove just as hard.
Germany has not had a far-right party run a state since 1945. Sunday did not quite deliver that. It brought the country closer than at any point since the war.
AI Disclosure: This article was created with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools and was reviewed and edited by the Glowls News editorial team before publication.