The right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) has won the State election in Saxony-Anhalt, eastern Germany, with 43.8 per cent of the vote, the best result in the party’s history. Preliminary official results announced by State returning officer Christa Dieckmann put it more than 26 percentage points clear of its nearest rival.
The AfD more than doubled the 20.8 per cent it won in 2021 and beat its previous high, set in Thuringia in 2024. Lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund said the party had achieved exactly what it set out to achieve.
The scale of the win came at the direct expense of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Minister-President Sven Schulze, which fell to 17.2 per cent from 37.1 per cent. It was the CDU’s weakest showing in a State it has governed since 2002. Schulze called the result a dark day for his party.
The result gives the AfD 39 of the 83 seats in the Magdeburg Landtag, three short of a majority. Siegmund said his party wanted to govern on its own and would not trade away its programme in any power game, warning that a fresh election would follow if no government emerged.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) took 9.3 per cent, the Greens 8.9 per cent and the Left (Die Linke) 8.6 per cent, leaving them with eight seats each. The Free Democratic Party, a partner in the outgoing coalition, dropped to 2.6 per cent and lost all seven of its seats.
Those parties and the CDU, all of which have ruled out co-operation with the AfD, hold 39 seats between them. The balance rests with the five members of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), an anti-immigration split from Die Linke that entered the State parliament for the first time on 5.3 per cent.
BSW lead candidate Claudia Wittig told public broadcaster ARD her party would decide issue by issue, and said it would be undemocratic to shut the AfD out of government. Her co-leader Thomas Schulze said the BSW would talk to every party, pointing to shared opposition to sanctions on Russia.
The State branch of the AfD has been classified as a confirmed right-wing extremist organisation by the regional Office for the Protection of the Constitution since 2023, a designation the party is appealing. An AfD-led State government would be the first in the history of the Federal Republic, the party having won in Thuringia in 2024 without taking office.
