Europe · updated 1h ago · 3 min read
AfD Wins 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt Election, Secures 39 of 83 Seats
AfD secured 43.8% of votes and 39 seats, just three shy of majority. Historic victory, strongest AfD performance in Saxony-Anhalt since WWII.
Whether it signals Europe-wide far-right momentum or local coalition math.
11 of 12 outlets skipped it: merz said voters nearly 60% cast ballots questioning Germany’s democratic institutions.
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The New York Times
“its reverberations could be felt from Downing Street in London to the Élysée Palace in Paris.”Read the original ↗
The New York Times spotlights Europe-wide far-right momentum. CBS emphasises German coalition arithmetic and firewall hurdles.
AfD Near Majority
Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 43.8% of the vote in the Saxony-Anhalt legislative election, securing 39 of the 83 seats in the new state parliament and falling three seats short of the 42-seat absolute majority needed to form a government.
“Sunday's preliminary results show it fell three seats short of an outright majority, with 43.8% of the vote.”
Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was “deeply shocked” by the result and described it as “seismic... not just in the country but also in my own political party,” while the BBC reported that AfD deputy parliamentary leader Beatrix von Storch urged opponents to enter talks because “You cannot say, I do not accept the vote of the people”.
The BBC said Merz’s CDU saw its share of the vote almost halved to 17.2% in the state’s preliminary results, and it noted that no far-right party has controlled a German state since World War Two.
The BBC also reported that governing at state level would mean powers over policing and local education, and it said Saxony-Anhalt has a small population of 2.1 million.
In the same coverage, the BBC described AfD’s plans for Saxony-Anhalt as highly controversial, including segregating child refugees into special classes and setting up a task-force to help detain and deport migrants who no longer have the right to be in the state.
Firewall Tested
The BBC reported that while most German political parties refuse to work with the AfD, Beatrix von Storch called for its opponents to enter talks, and it said the AfD was seeking support from other parties or individuals in order to govern.
Ulrich Siegmund told a news conference on Monday that the party had won a “clear mandate to govern,” and the BBC said he also told the public that he was reaching out to “everybody first” as discussions with other parties were initiated on Sunday night.
In a separate account, CBS News said the coalition arithmetic left AfD Saxony-Anhalt “three seats short of the 42-seat absolute majority needed to form a new, all-AfD administration,” and it described the “firewall” as a line of demarcation backed by virtually all parties to keep the party seen as extremist out of power.C
CBS News further reported that the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) received 5.3% of the vote and has ruled out joining a formal coalition with the AfD, while also noting that one of its two lead candidates said the BSW could abstain in a possible third round of voting to elect the state’s minister-president.C
The BBC added that Saxony-Anhalt’s defeated premier, the CDU’s Sven Schulze, said the mandate to govern Saxony-Anhalt “now lies with the AfD,” even as the BBC described the firewall as holding for decades.
Signal Beyond Germany
The New York Times framed the Saxony-Anhalt result as a signal to Europe, saying the far-right victory in eastern Germany “has given fresh momentum to hard-right parties hoping to win elections elsewhere on the continent next year.”T
“its reverberations could be felt from Downing Street in London to the Élysée Palace in Paris.”
The New York Times also quoted Mujtaba Rahman, an analyst who specializes in Europe at Eurasia Group, saying, “Governments are unable to address cost-of-living concerns. TThey are not able to deliver for their voters.”
In France, the press roundup in France 24 described the AfD victory as a “fascist shock,” while it also reported that Libération talked about “Germany at a turning point” and that L’Humanité warned of an “awful stammer of history.”
France 24 said the victory sent shockwaves through Europe, noting that Italy’s La Repubblica saw the result as “darkness” falling on Berlin and the European Union facing the “nostalgists of Nazism,” while El País argued that “Copying the far-right program, as many European conservatives did, did not work.”
In Spain, Le Figaro reported that Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez warned that “The extremist threat is gaining ground,” linking it to “the surrender of the traditional right” and telling Socialist Party deputies, “The world is watching us.”