The far-right Alternative for Germany party scored a landmark victory in yesterday’s state election in the East German länder of Saxony-Anhalt. With all votes counted, AfD got 43.8% of the vote – coming in the lead but falling three seats short of the majority that would have enabled them to govern on their own. It’s more than double what they got in the last state election five years ago. Chancellor Friedrich Mertz’s centre-right CDU suffered a disastrous defeat with 17.2%, dropping from 40 seats to 15. There was very high turnout at 77% – suggesting that the AfD pulled in voters that hadn’t voted five years ago. Now the big question is whether any party will join a coalition with them – or whether the will form a minority government.
The US President celebrated the AfD’s win on social media, as did the Russian President’s circle. The pro-Russian AfD has been happy to take support from both Moscow and Washington as it pledges to end German support for Ukraine and reestablish close ties between Germany and Russia. The AfD has spent the past two years cultivating close ties with MAGA, with Vice President JD Vance snubbing the German chancellor in his first visit to Germany last year to instead meet with the AfD leader. Vance told Germans in that first visit that they should let the AfD into government. Senior AfD party officials were at Mar-a-Lago on US election night in 2024. The AfD has said the US occupation of Germany should be ended and American troops should leave the country (a stance that on paper seems compatible with MAGA’s worldview but actually isn’t, as I’ve written before).
And yet, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his compatriot and party colleague EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have bent over backwards to please the US president as he supports their political enemies (more on that below). Together they orchestrated the EU’s trade surrender to Trump in July 2025, overruling French President Emmanuel Macron’s calls for the EU to stand its ground (as Canada just did). As the US government works to turf them out of power, these European centrists smile and take it – still unable to mentally accept the American aggression.
While it may seem that a local government election is not a big deal, you have to remember that Germany is a federation. This isn’t like the far right taking control of municipalities in unitary states like Britain and France, where regional governments have little power. The impact of this win on the federal German government will be similar to the impact of a member state in on the confederal EU government. Just like an EU member state government has representation and voting power in the Council in Brussels, a German land (state) has representation and voting power in the Bundesrat in Berlin. And if the AfD is able to form a governing majority in Saxony-Anhalt, that will give them voting power in the German parliament’s upper house.
Just like in the US, Germany’s 16 states have semi-autonomous powers over things like education and internal security. Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt leader who has drawn in young voters with his flashy social media activity much like Jordan Bardella in France, has promised to launch a “deportation offensive” against non-Germans in the state. He has also promised to ban Germany’s public broadcasting network from the state, accusing it of fake news. He wants to kick disabled children out of standard German schooling and ban the display of the pride flag in schools.
The cordon sanitaire failed. Now what?
The AfD has made clear that it would use its control over this East German state as a blueprint for its national plans, campaigning with the not-at-all-ominous-sounding slogan “it begins here”. The big question now is: