AfD wins landslide in Saxony-Anhalt: What happens now?

The far-right, anti-immigration AfD has won a landslide victory in Saxony-Anhalt’s state election. But the party might still struggle to form a government. What happens next, and what does the result mean for migrants across Germany?

AfD wins 43,8 percent of vote in Saxony-Anhalt

Polling stations closed at 6pm on Sunday night, and at the time of writing, the latest polls show the AfD has secured 43,8 percent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt’s state election. This is a 23-percentage-point increase on the party’s results in the 2021 state election.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU took just 17,1 percent of the vote and saw a 19,2 percentage-point loss compared to 2021. The few remaining votes were taken by the SPD (9,3 percent), Greens (8,6 percent), the Left (8,6 percent) and BSW (5,3 percent). With just 2,6 percent the FDP failed to reach the 5 percent hurdle required to enter parliament.

This is not the first time the far-right, populist party, which has been linked with neo-Nazi groups, has won a state election in Germany. In September 2024, the party won Thuringia with 32,8 percent of the vote. 

But it is the AfD’s best election result to date. It is also the fourth-most dominant state election victory in postwar Germany following the CSU’s 1974 result in Bavaria (62,1 percent), the SPD's 1959 result in Bremen (54,9 percent) and the CDU's 1975 result in Rhineland-Palatinate (53,9 percent). Sunday also saw the highest state election voter turnout (77,8 percent) in Germany’s post-reunification history.

Brandmauer will be put to the test

So what happens now? Despite a landslide victory, the AfD might struggle to form a government. The party is just short of the votes it needs for an absolute majority, meaning it cannot govern alone and would need to form a coalition to govern the state parliament.

Then there is the firewall (Brandmauer): an agreement between most of the remaining parties to never form coalitions with extremist parties at the municipal, state or federal level; never jointly submit proposals or bills in the German parliament; never cast votes that would indirectly benefit extremist parties; and never negotiate or compromise with such parties.

This is where the importance of BSW - a left-populist-nationalist party started by the Left defector Sahra Wagenknecht in 2024 - comes in. While the BSW has said it will not support an AfD state premier, it supports ending the firewall and is open to issue-based collaboration with the AfD.

It’s also worth noting that despite the firewall, the AfD has historically received support from all parties at the municipal level. A Berlin Social Science Centre study found that between 2019 and 2024, in cases of cooperation with the AfD, the CDU participated 62 percent of the time, the FDP 50 percent, SPD 38 percent, and Greens/the Left on one of every four occasions.

Elected representatives now have 30 days to form a coalition before the new parliament must convene on October 6, 2026. However, there is no deadline for electing a new state premier.

What does the AfD have planned?

Many of the AfD’s campaign policies directly target migrants and international people in Germany, and, frankly, any person or institution seen to be at odds with the party’s far-right, populist politics.

During his campaign run, state premier candidate Ulrich Siegmund promised voters a “deportation and migration offensive” in Saxony-Anhalt. 43 manifesto points detail plans for a “180-degree turnaround in migration policy”.

These include “an immediate and total ban on immigration from selected non-EU countries”; preventing churches from accommodating refugees; ending the constitutional right to asylum; “compulsory work” for refugees and asylum seekers; restricting naturalisation and denying a German passport to “individuals posing a threat”; and creating a “deportation task force”.

However, even with an absolute majority, the party would find it difficult to deliver on many of these promises. This is because many of the AfD’s immigration policies could only be implemented at the federal or European level.

Other policies contradict principles of equality of citizens and human dignity outlined in the German constitution. When a higher regional court in Münster designated the AfD as a “suspected” far-right extremist organisation in 2024, it did so on the grounds that “at least part of the party wants to accord second-rank status to German citizens with a migration background”.

Despite questions of policy feasibility, constitutionality, the need for an absolute majority to lead a coalition, and the firewall, the AfD will have considerable sway in Saxony-Anhalt’s new state parliament. 

Speaking to The Local, Ned Richardson-Little, research fellow at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam, said there were “many ways for the AfD to advance many of its most openly anti-constitutional policies on a more gradual basis that would be within the boundaries of the law."

Richardson-Little said Germany was "already seeing other parties pushing through aggressive deportation programs, at times in conflict with the courts," and that the AfD would "also use existing law to revoke many people's legal residence or even to revoke their naturalisation based on claims of fraud".

These are just a few ways the AfD’s migration policy could affect migrants' lives in Saxony-Anhalt, before considering its plans to defund public broadcasting, its lack of policy to address the extreme skilled worker shortage, cuts to access to integration courses, replacing naturalisation tests with essays and restrictions on religious freedom.

Despite Germany’s, and particularly eastern federal states’, economic and infrastructural degradation, the party has just 14 pledges on economic policy and 14 on improving transport and infrastructure. 

Speaking to detektor fm in July, Undra Dreßler (SPD), Executive Director of the State Network of Migrant Organisations in Saxony-Anhalt (LAMSA), said as many as 80 percent of migrant members were considering leaving the state due to racism and the AfD’s rise.

Migrants in other German federal states should also pay close attention in the coming weeks. How Germany’s other parties respond to the AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt victory will set the tone for state- and federal-level politics in the coming years.

Speaking to the media on Monday morning, Siegmund reaffirmed that his party's ambitions are "not just about Saxony-Anhalt; they are about Germany".