Voters in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt will go to the polls on Sunday in a closely watched election that could see the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) become the first far-right party to take power at a state level since World War II.
Under the smiling and telegenic 35-year-old leader Ulrich Siegmund, the party has been polling comfortably ahead for months, and there is a genuine chance the AfD could take an absolute majority on Sunday evening – particularly if several smaller parties fail to clear Germany‘s 5 percent threshold to enter parliament.
Polls opened at 8am local time (06:00 GMT) and some 1.7 million voters have until 6pm (16:00 GMT) to cast their ballots, with first projections expected shortly after.
The AfD’s key campaign promises include a “remigration and deportation offensive”, a ban on LGBTQ pride rainbow flags at public schools and an end to new wind farms.
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Germany’s domestic intelligence agency considers the AfD chapter Siegmund represents as “right-wing extremist” with links to ethno-nationalist groups and think-tanks.
Siegmund was present at a 2023 secret meeting near Berlin where extreme right-wing activists discussed a radical “remigration” plan to forcibly expel millions of people with a migration background from the country.
Sunday’s vote is being closely watched as a barometer for the government of the deeply unpopular Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who has attempted to chip away at the AfD’s popularity by taking a tougher line on irregular migration and security.
Recent surveys place the AfD at just over 40 percent, followed by Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU) at 23 percent.
An absolute majority would allow the AfD to bypass mainstream parties’ efforts to keep the party blocked out of power by refusing to work with it under a longstanding “firewall” policy.
Achieving an absolute majority is a high bar to clear in Germany’s proportional electoral system, which was designed in part to encourage coalition governments and make it difficult for one party to rule alone.
If the AfD falls short of an outright majority, a CDU-led administration under incumbent state premier Sven Schulze is the most likely outcome, though the exact shape of any coalition would depend on which parties enter.
Weeks of coalition talks could follow Sunday’s vote.
‘What we have started here can no longer be stopped’
For the AfD, the Saxony-Anhalt election is a stepping stone towards its larger ambitions of securing national power in the next federal election scheduled for 2029.
“No matter the outcome of tomorrow’s election, we have already made history,” said Siegmund at a final rally on Saturday evening.
“Because what we have started here in Saxony-Anhalt – what is currently sweeping across all of Germany – can no longer be stopped,” he told the crowd in Saxony-Anhalt’s capital, Magdeburg.
The AfD has long tapped into lingering resentment in Germany’s East about an enduring wealth gap with the West decades after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.
Many state-owned enterprises were shuttered following the absorption of the communist German Democratic Republic by the West, sparking large-scale unemployment and population flight, especially by young women.
Decades on, wages and savings remain lower on average, most big business is still based in the west, and eastern Germans – one fifth of the population – are under-represented in politics.
Even if the AfD emerges as the frontrunner on Sunday, though, the party would struggle to enter government due to the firewall.
Such a result opens the prospect of complex coalition negotiations, dependent on which parties can hit the 5 percent hurdle.
Polls show one of the CDU’s current coalition partners, the liberal FDP, falling short, while the other, the centre-left SPD, is under 10 percent.
The small far-left anti-immigration BSW, the only party that has not ruled out a coalition with the AfD, is also likely to miss out.
For Schulze, who is favoured in polls as voters’ top choice for leader, combining with the SPD and Greens might not be enough for a majority, but the CDU has ruled out a coalition with the far-left Left Party that could help it reach that threshold.
One option could be a minority government led by Schulze that would depend on passive tolerance from the Left – a model used in the neighbouring eastern German state of Thuringia.
(FRANCE 24 with Reuters and AFP)
