A new voter survey for the east German State of Saxony-Anhalt has electrified right-wingers in Germany, as it shows an option for the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) to achieve a majority in the state’s parliament after elections in September this year.
The poll – conducted and released by pollster Insa for news site Nius on March 25 – sees AfD coming in first with 38 per cent of the vote.
The conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Chancellor Friedrich Merz would come in second with 25 per cent, followed by the left-wing Die Linke party with 13 per cent.
Interestingly, all other parties poll very close to or below the 5 per cent hurdle. This is the cut-off for actually making it into the state parliament in the city of Magdeburg.
SACHSEN-ANHALT | Sonntagsfrage Landtagswahl INSA/NIUS
AfD: 38% (-1)
CDU: 25% (-1)
LINKE: 13% (+2)
SPD: 6% (-2)
BSW: 5% (-1)
GRÜNE: 4% (+1)
FDP: 3% (+1)
Sonstige: 6% (+1)Änderungen zur letzten Umfrage vom 27. Januar 2026
Verlauf: https://t.co/x9wTDqkYqA#ltwst #ltwlsa pic.twitter.com/UfJ5VS8J15
— Deutschland Wählt (@Wahlen_DE) March 25, 2026
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) would get 6 per cent. The left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) party, an offshoot of Die Linke, would get 5 per cent, the Green Party 4 per cent, and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) just 3 per cent.
If all these parties fail to make it into the state parliament, all seats would be divided up between AfD, CDU and Die Linke – with the right-wingers possibly achieving an absolute majority of seats.
Martin Reichardt, the AfD’s leader in Saxony-Anhalt said: “Current polls show a historic chance for our State. If the smaller parties fail to pass the five-per-cent-mark, 40 per cent of the vote could be enough for an absolute majority. Thus a AfD State government is a realistic scenario.”
Reichardt added he wanted to make politics “without half-hearted compromises” for Saxony-Anhalt: “The CDU has been in government for decades. Since then, our country has been going downhill in virtually every area. The Christian Democrats have thus proven that they are not the solution, but part of the problem.”
Surveys show that up to 50 per cent of AfD supporters in the state are former CDU voters. Another third come from the FDP, which has been all but obliterated politically throughout Germany after it entered into a left-wing coalition government with SPD and the Greens under former chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) in 2021.
If the polls were born out in the real ballot, it would be the first time AfD had governed a German state.
While the right-wingers are exceptionally strong in eastern Germany, the cordon sanitaire – a promise by all other parties including the conservatives to abstain from any co-operation with AfD – has so far effectively kept them out of power.
At the last state election in eastern Germany in Thuringia in September 2024, AfD came in first with almost 33 per cent of the vote. The CDU, though, as second ultimately formed a three-party government with SPD and BSW – even though it had long-vowed not to co-operate with the hard-left.
Establishment politicians are up in arms over the right-wingers’ strength in the polls.
Sven Schulze, the state’s current Prime Minister (CDU), said on March 25 that the AfD had become exceedingly far-right since 2015, announcing that he would not co-operate with them or Die Linke and accusing AfD frontrunner Ulrich Siegmund of being all talk and lacking the experience necessary to head the state.
