The far-right AfD surged into first place in state elections in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday but it was unclear whether it would be able to form a government on its own, according to exit polls after voting closed.
The AfD won 44.5 percent of the vote, with Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives on 18.5 percent, with the centre-left Social Democrats and environmental Greens both clearing the minimum threshold to enter parliament, an exit poll on the ARD broadcaster showed.
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The party’s co-leader Alice Weidel hailed an “historic” result which had given the AfD a clear mandate to govern but it was not immediately clear whether it would be able to form a government.
If the AfD is unable to rule outright, it could trigger a protracted process of coalition building by mainstream parties who are determined to keep out of power a party investigated for right-wing extremism by Germany’s domestic intelligence service.
The left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), a potential AfD coalition partner, could also clear the threshold.
While hard right parties have gained ground elsewhere in Europe, Germany’s Nazi past has contributed to a reluctance among mainstream parties to cooperate with the AfD, which wants a hard line on migration and warmer ties with Russia.
The AfD, led in Saxony-Anhalt by the 35-year-old Ulrich Siegmund, sees accusations of extremism as scaremongering and an insult to its millions of supporters.
Sunday’s result is also another blow to the authority of Merz, whose popularity has sagged as his coalition government struggles to revive growth in Europe’s largest economy.
A first-ever AfD state government would be a shock for many in Germany, which has been at pains to atone for its dark history of World War II and the Holocaust and so far kept extremist parties at bay in a policy known as the “firewall”.
The spectre of a far-right state government drew thousands of the AfD’s opponents to a rally on Saturday in Magdeburg, the regional capital, with banners saying “life is better without Nazis”.
“I’m very worried,” demonstrator Laura Saalfeld told AFP.
“Whatever the results, the atmosphere will change. Far-right sympathisers will show themselves more openly on the streets.”
Smiling face, radical agenda
Siegmund, the AfD’s telegenic top candidate, has ambitions to lead a political revolution from Saxony-Anhalt that would propel the party to national victory in 2029.
On the campaign trail, Siegmund—a former entrepreneur with a sharp undercut hairstyle and a huge social media following—has been mobbed by adoring fans, many wearing T-shirts bearing his likeness.
The party has tapped into a sense of nostalgia for communist East Germany as well as lingering resentment about an enduring wealth gap with the west decades after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.
In line with the sometimes defiant sense of local “Ossie pride”, Siegmund has often ridden the iconic local Simson bike, including to the polling booth Sunday in his hometown of Tangermuende.
While Siegmund has been dubbed the friendly face of the AfD, his campaign promises have been radical, including targeting irregular migrants with a “remigration and deportation offensive” from day one.
The party’s anti-“woke” agenda also includes vows to replace LGBTQ pride rainbow flags at public schools with the German standard, and to change history teaching to lessen the emphasis on the Third Reich.
In order to replace migrant workers, the AfD wants to lure back German expatriates, while offering “baby bonuses” for families to reverse the shrinking of the population in the small state of 2.1 million people.
The German Economic Institute has warned the AfD’s immigration policy would be “ruinous” for Saxony-Anhalt, which is highly reliant on foreign-born workers, especially in the health sector.
Others have voiced fears an AfD-run state security apparatus could leak sensitive information to Russia, which Moscow could use to destabilise Germany.
The Kremlin “makes no secret of the fact that the AfD is the most important instrument for destabilising Germany for (Russian President Vladimir) Putin,” Thuringia state interior minister Georg Maier told the Handelsblatt daily.
The strong AfD win also heaps pressure on Merz, who has vowed to reboot a stagnant economy and restrict irregular immigration, but has seen his party beaten by the AfD in national surveys too.
Political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder of Kassel University said that after an AfD win in Saxony-Anhalt, “Merz’s critics will become even more vocal, and calls for better leadership will become impossible to ignore”.
(FRANCE 24 with AFP, Reuters)
