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AfD wins 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt and heads for 39 seats
September 7, 2026
The AfD took 43.8% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt and is heading for 39 of the 83 seats in the state parliament, three short of a majority, while Merz's CDU polled 17.2%.
Saxony-Anhalt is an eastern German state of about 2.1 million people, run since 2002 by the CDU with two smaller partners. The AfD won seats in the federal parliament in 2017 and now leads the opposition there.
Key facts
- Surveys published at the close of the campaign had the AfD near 40-41%, and the party looks to have come close to doubling the 23.7% it took in 2021.
- With 43.8% of ballots, the AfD more than doubled what it took five years earlier in this region of 2.1 million residents lying west of Berlin.
- That left Merz's CDU well behind, on 17.2% and 15 seats, roughly half the backing it had held before.
- Projections put the AfD on track for 39 of the 83 seats in the state assembly, leaving it three seats shy of governing alone.
- Merz pledged to revive a struggling German economy and to halt the AfD's advance, and has delivered on neither; the party has gained ground steadily since arriving in parliament in 2017 and now leads the opposition in the Bundestag.
The AfD took 43.8% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, and The Guardian reports that is roughly twice what the party managed there in 2021, when it finished on 23.7%. BBC reports the party is on course for 39 of the 83 seats in the state legislature, which leaves it three seats away from ruling alone. The Guardian reports Merz's CDU fell to 17.2% and 15 seats, about half the support it held before, and BBC and Bloomberg.com carry the same figure for the conservatives. Bloomberg.com's title casts Merz as working to limit the political damage from the far-right win, while The New York Times presents the outcome as a message aimed well past Germany's own borders.
Coalition arithmetic is the open question now, and the outlets describe it the same way. BBC reports Beatrix von Storch, the AfD's deputy parliamentary leader, said her party would open talks aimed at winning over individual members of other parties, and warned that parties still refusing to deal with the AfD risked "severe chaos and a new election". The Guardian reports Alice Weidel, the AfD's co-leader, said the vote handed her party a "clear government mandate" and that the AfD would speak to every party about how it might govern. The Guardian reports the CDU called its own result bitter yet held to its position against governing alongside the AfD, an arrangement the AfD has ruled out from its own side. BBC reports one option under discussion is quiet backing from the small BSW for an AfD minority government.
One point does not settle. Whether the BSW has ruled out electing either Siegmund or the sitting governor Sven Schulze while still attacking the firewall against the AfD reads one way in one account and is not carried that way in another. The stake is arithmetic, because the BSW's 5.3% and five seats are enough to decide between a deadlocked chamber and an AfD minority government. The vote shares, the seat totals, the CDU's losses and the public positions of both leaderships are settled. What the BSW does with its five seats is not.
Nikita, who joined an anti-AfD "Democracy Festival" in Magdeburg the night before ballots were cast, said his countrymen needed to "learn from our history and not go back. We don't want the dark times any more".
Still developing
Accounts of what was said about whether the BSW would elect Siegmund or Sven Schulze as governor do not line up. The record leaves the point open as of the draft.
How settled the reporting is
Sources
- BBC — Germany's far-right AfD hails big victory in east, but falls short of majority
- The Guardian — Far-right AfD wins key German state election but falls just short of majority