Far-right Alternativ für Deutschland party wins majority in election for leadership of the state of Saxony-Anhalt in eastern Germany

Today there was an election in one of the eastern German states, Saxony-Anhalt. These were the results (New York Times):

The Alternative for Germany party dominated a crucial state election on Sunday, according to near-final results, but fell short of the absolute majority needed to become the first far-right party to govern part of the country since the Nazi era.

If those results hold, the AfD (Alternativ für Deutschland), as the party is known by its German initials, could still assume power in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt in the coming weeks, depending on the negotiations among rival parties that have vowed not to support an AfD government.

Saxony-Anhalt is a relatively small state, and the heart of the AfD’s power base in eastern Germany. But the election result sent shock waves through the country’s political system, which was designed after World War II to prevent extremist parties from ever returning to power....

The political establishment has treated the AfD as a pariah. Still, the party tapped into voter frustration on a wide range of economic and social issues to win about 44 percent of the vote in the state, and was set to claim 39 of the 83 seats in the Parliament.

“We’ve made history, and we’re taking our country back,” Ulrich Siegmund, the party’s candidate to lead the state, told a cheering crowd on Sunday. “It all starts here in Saxony-Anhalt.

Exit polls suggested that many of the AfD’s gains came at the expense of the center-right Christian Democrats, the party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz that also led the incumbent government in the state. Amid record turnout, the AfD won the support of many Germans who were casting ballots for the first time. 

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has designated the AfD as a “suspected extremist” group and its Saxony-Anhalt branch as “extremist.” Some of the party’s leaders have played down the Holocaust and adopted Nazi slogans. Others have strong ties to Russia. The AfD has also said that Islam is incompatible with the German Constitution and has vowed to conduct mass deportations of immigrants....

Rival parties could still prevent the AfD from assuming power in Saxony-Anhalt. The Christian Democrats, who finished a distant second, could end up leading the state if they can build a coalition with four others: the center-left Social Democrats and Greens, the far-left Die Linke, and the populist Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, known by its German initials BSW.

But some Christian Democrat leaders in the state have said they would not work with Die Linke, calling it extremist. BSW leaders have also said they would not support the current state leader, Sven Schulze of the Christian Democrats, or the AfD. They have pushed for a nonpartisan state leader, an idea Mr. Siegmund rejected late on Sunday. Mr. Siegmund also seemed to invite some members of the Christian Democrats to defect and supply the votes for an AfD government.

From the Washington Post - support by the Trump administration for the AfD:

Despite the extremist label, which AfD disputes, the party has surged in polls — and has also received a warm reception from the Trump administration and influential members of President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement.

The world’s richest man, Elon Musk, gave a boost to AfD leader Alice Weidel by interviewing her live in English on his X platform last year, and he has urged Germans to vote for the party.

At a speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2025, Vice President JD Vance lashed out at German officials, criticizing efforts to exclude the party from the country’s political life.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio called the party’s designation by the intelligence agency “tyranny in disguise.” “What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD,” Rubio posted on X, “but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes.”

More on the AfD's plans and the "joy of being German"

The AfD has built its support in Saxony-Anhalt on a mix of historical grievances and modern-day challenges, with voters concerned about a stagnant economy, high unemployment, the wars in Ukraine and Iran, and overall distrust of Western liberal democratic values.

The state has lost jobs, and more than a quarter of its population, since German reunification, and East Germans still express a deep-rooted sense of being second-class citizens compared with those in states in the west because of lasting economic gaps and a lack of representation in senior government positions.

There is also fatigue with the CDU, which has led Saxony-Anhalt since 2002 but, in the eyes of many voters, failed to significantly improve their lives.

Anti-migrant sentiment is a resonant issue as well, despite Saxony-Anhalt having one of the lowest shares of immigrants in the country.

The AfD’s plan for Saxony-Anhalt includes using a special task force to deport migrants, cracking down on what it calls left-wing propaganda in German authorities’ pro-LGBTQ+ stance and overhauling the local education system to foster a patriotic upbringing in future generations. This would include shifting the history curriculum away from what the AfD sees as an excessive focus on the Nazi era, toward more “positive aspects” of German history.

One of the AfD’s central and most controversial positions is the concept of remigration, which the party officially defines as using incentives and legal measures to deport migrants.

Some regional branches of the party, and some of its members, have voiced support for a broader understanding of remigration — one that would also target German citizens they deem insufficiently assimilated into society.

That moves the concept closer to the framework coined by Martin Sellner, an extreme far-right Austrian activist whose ideology draws on the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, which claims that White Europeans are being replaced by immigrants...

On his months-long campaign trail, Siegmund has fielded hundreds of questions about ties to white nationalists and about the AfD’s challenge to what it labels “the cult of guilt” over Germany’s Nazi past and remembrance of Nazi crimes during World War II.

Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, an AfD lawmaker in Saxony-Anhalt who is regarded as the main architect of the party’s initiatives for the state, has pushed to reshape history education around the slogan “more Bismarck, less Hitler,” though the controversial phrase was later removed from the election platform.

“We want to spread the joy of being German,” Tillschneider said at a recent campaign event in Querfurt. “It is a celebration. Celebrate being German.”