The party won 44% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt’s state election on Sunday, according to provisional results. By comparison, center-right CDU, the party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, won less than 20%. The state of 2.1 million people saw a record voter turnout of 77%.
Nevertheless, the surge in support for the AfD, which ran on a platform of restricting immigration, ending aid to Ukraine, and taking Germany out of the euro, is remarkable in a country where the legacy of Nazism has long kept the far right at the political margins. The party’s Saxony-Anhalt branch is classified by the state’s domestic intelligence as “right-wing extremist,” a designation that its leaders reject.
“We’re taking our country back, it starts in Saxony-Anhalt,” he added. “A jolt is going through all of Germany.”
U.S. President Donald Trump posted a screenshot of the projected results without comment on Truth Social. Members of Trump’s Administration, including Vice President J.D. Vance, previously expressed public support for the party.
Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev posted a screenshot of Trump’s post. He said in the caption,“Historic win for the pragmatic AfD that will put migration under control. The ruling Bidenthink coalition eviscerated,” referring to former U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat. The AfD is friendly to the Kremlin and has advocated for Germany to end support for Ukraine.
Other European leaders expressed alarm over the result.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said more bluntly, “In Poland, only idiots or traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD in Germany.”
The party would largely be unable to enact many of its immigration policies in any individual state even if it can form a government, since many of its proposals would require federal action. But it could tighten policing and pursue changes to schools and cultural policy at the state level.
The AfD has also attacked Bauhaus, calling the influential school and design movement an “aberration of modernism.” Critics, including Germany’s culture minister, have said the AfD’s rhetoric echoes that of the Nazis, who forced the Bauhaus school to close in 1933.
The AfD capitalized on disillusionment with the political establishment and drew on regional and national pride, including “Ostalgie” or nostalgia for aspects of life in the former communist East Germany. That message found fertile ground in eastern strongholds, like Saxony-Anhalt, where economic disparities with western Germany persist decades after reunification. During the campaign, Siegmund frequently rode a blue Simson, a moped manufactured in the former East Germany, a move that drew criticism from the descendants of the Jewish family that founded Simson.
Founded in 2013, support for the AfD has grown significantly in recent years.
Siegmund has said he wants to become state premier and eventually bring the AfD to victory in the 2029 national elections.
What the results mean for the AfD
Germany’s established parties have refused to work with the AfD, continuing their “firewall” against cooperating with the far-right. State premier Sven Schulze acknowledged defeat but his party, the CDU, said it would explore talks with other parties about forming a multiparty coalition.
Siegmund has thus far ruled out leading a minority government or adopting an informal arrangement that would leave his government depending on unsteady support. “If necessary there’ll just be new elections, then we’d just get 50 or 55%,” he told ZDF on election night. He said, however, that he would be willing to work with individual lawmakers or parliamentary groups.
Thousands joined an anti-AfD demonstration on Saturday in the regional capital of Magdeburg. Some carried banners that read, “life is better without Nazis.” One protester, Laura Saalfeld, told AFP, “Whatever the results, the atmosphere will change. Far-right sympathisers will show themselves more openly on the streets.”
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