About 150,000 march in Germany after the AfD's Saxony-Anhalt win

Organisers put Saturday's turnout against the Alternative for Germany at about 150,000 people in roughly 20 cities, including Berlin, Hamburg, Munich and Düsseldorf. The immediate cause was the 6 September election in Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD took nearly 44 percent, against about 17 percent for Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic Union.

The party is projected to win 39 of 83 seats in the Magdeburg Landtag, three short of a majority. It has begun talks with other groups. Every mainstream party has so far refused to enter a coalition under the long-standing "firewall" rule. If that rule holds, Saxony-Anhalt faces either a minority experiment or a prolonged search for a speaker and a cabinet.

The numbers on the street

Police and organisers agreed on about 20,000 in Düsseldorf under the slogan "Kein Schritt zurück." Campact put Hamburg at about 25,000 and Munich at about 12,000. Berlin police counted 18,000; organisers there said 32,000. Marches also ran in Leipzig, Magdeburg, Mainz and Saarbrücken. Prüf, a group that wants the Federal Constitutional Court to examine a ban, calls a rally in state capitals on the second Saturday of each month. Saturday was that date.

Signs read "Ban the AfD now" and "Democracy needs no alternatives." Christoph Bautz of Campact said a broad slice of civil society had come out to stop "enemies of the constitution" taking government power in Saxony-Anhalt. The AfD held a counter-rally in Berlin attended by Kristin Brinker, its lead candidate for the coming Berlin election.

Merz has been sceptical of a party ban, citing the high legal bar. Germany's domestic intelligence service has classified parts of the AfD as confirmed right-wing extremist. A ban would have to be sought by the Bundestag, the Bundesrat or the federal government and decided by the Constitutional Court. No such case has been filed.

What 44 percent does to the firewall

Saxony-Anhalt is an eastern state. The CDU ran it for decades. A result in which the AfD more than doubles the CDU share changes the arithmetic even if the firewall holds. The AfD is now close enough to a majority that a handful of independents or a small partner would put an AfD minister-president in office, the first far-right head of a German state government since 1945.

That is the fact the marches were answering. It is also the fact the Landtag will have to live with when it convenes. Banning speeches and coalition arithmetic are different tools. Saturday used the first. The second is what happens in Magdeburg in the coming weeks.

Luisa Neubauer spoke in Berlin for a democratic common life. The more precise question is whether any party with 17 percent can keep a party with 44 percent out of the state chancellery without either a ban or a partner. Neither is on the table tonight.