AfD on Track for First Far-Right State Government in Germany

44.5 percent. Say it twice and it still does not sound like a German election result — not in a country where the far right has never run a state since 1945. Yet that is where voting closed at 18:00 on Sunday, 6 September 2026 in Saxony-Anhalt, with first forecasts putting the Alternative for Germany (AfD) at about 44.5 percent and the governing Christian Democrats at 18.5 percent. ^{24 28} About 1.7 million people were eligible to vote, and by 16:00 turnout had already reached roughly 65 percent, above the full 60.3 percent turnout in 2021. ³⁰ A certified result is expected early Monday, but the scale is already set: a lead of 26 points, a doubling, a rupture.

To feel the swing, go back five years. In 2021 the AfD took 20.8 percent in Saxony-Anhalt and the CDU took 37.1 percent and the statehouse. ⁹ The first forecasts now reverse and then double that order: AfD around 44 to 44.5 percent across both broadcasters’ exits, CDU at 18.5 percent. ²⁸ Pre-election polls had pointed the same way — AfD at 40 to 43 percent, CDU at 22 to 24 percent — but the forecast lands at the top of the AfD range and the bottom for the CDU. ^{12 16} It would be the strongest showing for the far right in any German state since the war, and the worst for a party that has held the premiership here continuously since 2002. ¹⁰

The contradiction is that first place was never the question. Power is. The regular Landtag has 83 seats, so 42 means an absolute majority. ⁹ The seat sketches from those forecasts put the AfD at 39 to 41 seats and the CDU at 16 to 17, with the Left at 8 to 9, the Greens at 8 to 9 and the SPD at 7 to 8. ²⁸ The new left-populist BSW sits on the knife-edge at 4.8 to 5.0 percent, with the FDP heading out around 2 to 2.5 percent. ²⁸ Because parties under five percent lose their votes, those wasted votes inflate the winner’s seat share, which is why one university model still gave an AfD solo majority about a 26 percent chance even without 42 percent of votes. ²⁰ Whether BSW clears five percent, and how leftover votes concentrate, decides whether 44 percent becomes a government.

The two men at the top of the ballot could not be clearer about what comes next, which is nothing together. Ulrich Siegmund, 35, from Tangermünde, in the Landtag since 2016 and co-chair of the AfD group since 2022, campaigned on 45 percent plus X and an AfD-only government and rules out any coalition with the CDU. ^{31 32} His rival Sven Schulze, 46, born 31 July 1979 in Quedlinburg, an MEP from 2014 to 2021 and minister-president since 28 January 2026 after Reiner Haseloff stepped down for a generation change, rules out AfD and Left ministers and wants to continue the CDU-SPD-FDP coalition. ^{4 5} Both Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Schulze reject any deal with the AfD; Siegmund rejects any deal with the CDU. ¹ That mutual refusal is the CDU’s Brandmauer, the 2018 federal congress resolution barring any coalition or similar cooperation with the AfD or the Left. ¹

Merz put the firewall in economic language. He said he cannot imagine foreign investors at a groundbreaking with an AfD minister-president and that the state would take considerable damage. ¹⁰ In Quedlinburg and at Leuna he added that investors would think three times if an absolute majority for a right-populist party locks in on Monday, and that the state must not become an Experimentierfeld für Wutbürger — a testing field for angry citizens. ¹ The warning matters in a state built around energy-intensive chemistry at Leuna, with the oldest workforce in Germany and costs under pressure. ⁸ Saxony-Anhalt casts 4 of the Bundesrat’s 69 votes as a bloc, so moving those four votes out of the CDU-aligned camp would put the first AfD voice at the national table even though one state cannot block federal law alone. ⁸ Saxony-Anhalt also takes the chair of the Conference of Minister-Presidents later this year. ⁸

What makes the result less surprising up close is the ground it grew from. The state’s population fell from about 3 million at the fall of the Wall to roughly 2.2 million now, with forecasts under 2 million around 2031 and toward 1.8 million by 2040. ¹ It is the documented AfD paradox: 90 percent of AfD supporters name migration as their focus, yet the foreigner share is about 8 percent and the migrant-background share about 11 percent versus roughly 30 percent nationally. ¹ The party is strongest where immigration and crime are lowest. ¹ The AfD runs here on the party’s hardest state program: remigration and expanded deportation detention, a work duty for asylum seekers, cutting democracy-promotion funding, shrinking ministries, rewriting public broadcasting, keeping coal, returning to nuclear power, easing Russian-gas sanctions through the Bundesrat, and traditionalist schooling. ¹ Siegmund attended the 2023 Potsdam meeting exposed by Correctiv that discussed mass remigration. ¹

That program meets an electorate the researchers describe as willing but fragile. The 2025 Sachsen-Anhalt-Monitor, led by Leipzig sociologist Gert Pickel, found that while 87 percent endorse democracy in the abstract, only 43.5 percent reject authoritarian alternatives. ¹ Fifty-four percent — the fragile democrats — accept democracy but would not rule out a one-party system, a strong leader or a dictatorship, and about 3 percent are classified as autocrats. ¹ Pickel’s point is not that these voters are anti-democrats, but that they would not reliably defend the system in a rupture — precisely the pool where the AfD grows. ¹ It is also the context for the legal line: Saxony-Anhalt’s domestic intelligence service has classified the AfD state association since 7 November 2023 as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization, a label the party is fighting in court in Magdeburg, stayed pending the federal case in Cologne, which does not remove it from the ballot. ¹