AfD takes 39 of 83 seats in Saxony-Anhalt and still cannot govern

Alternative for Germany finished first in Saxony-Anhalt on 6 September with 43.8 percent of the list vote and 39 of 83 seats in the Landtag. That is 16 seats more than in 2021 and still three short of an absolute majority. The party won 38 of 41 constituencies. The remaining three direct seats went to Die Linke, one in Magdeburg and two in Halle. Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats won none.

The CDU's list share fell to 17.2 percent, almost half the 2021 figure, for 15 seats. About 83,000 former CDU voters moved to the AfD, according to the official breakdown carried by Reuters. The Social Democrats took 9.3 percent and eight seats. Turnout reached 77.8 percent, the highest recorded in a Saxony-Anhalt Landtag election and almost identical to the state's turnout at the 2025 federal vote.

Merz told the CDU executive the result had shaken the party to its foundations. At a later press conference he said the party was deeply shocked and called the score its worst in the state in decades. He ruled out working with the AfD and said he would keep the federal reform programme. He also said he would not resign. An ARD Infratest dimap survey found 87 percent of voters in the state unhappy with the federal government. A ZDF poll found three quarters of respondents, including almost half of CDU supporters, thought Merz had hurt the state result.

A tied chamber and a broken firewall

The arithmetic is tight. The AfD has 39 seats. A hypothetical bloc of the CDU, SPD, Greens and Left also has 39. Neither side can elect a minister-president without a defection or a deal with the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, which remains in the chamber on a smaller share. AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund had said before polling day that he would run for the top job only with an absolute majority. After the count he missed that target by three seats. On 8 September the AfD offered exploratory talks and named the CDU and the BSW.

National co-leader Tino Chrupalla told ARD that politics always means compromise and asked CDU lawmakers to make a centre-right majority possible. Mainstream parties have treated cooperation with the AfD as forbidden since the party entered state politics. That rule is known as the firewall. The AfD calls it undemocratic. The test in Magdeburg is whether any CDU member breaks it in public.

Outgoing CDU minister-president Sven Schulze said he would draw lessons. The party failed to win a single direct mandate, a first in this state for the Union in the post-reunification period. Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research, told Reuters the result was above all a vote of no confidence in the federal government. Thorsten Frei, the CDU's parliamentary leader in the Bundestag, called it a watershed for the country.

What the AfD ran on, and who noticed

The party's platform in the east is familiar: tighter immigration rules, an end to military support for Ukraine, and a warmer line toward Moscow. It also wants to leave the euro. Those positions alarm Warsaw and Paris. Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski called the outcome a very worrying sign. Former chancellor Angela Merkel, speaking as a CDU member, called the result simply shocking and a turning point, and said her heart bled.

Siegmund described Merz as the AfD's best campaigner. The chancellor's personal ratings are the lowest recorded for the office. The state vote now sits on top of a weak economy, a fight over pensions and living costs, and a federal coalition that 87 percent of local voters told ARD they dislike. The AfD more than doubled its 2021 share. That is the number that will travel to other eastern states that vote later in the cycle.

Government formation can drag for weeks. Siegmund cannot pass a budget or elect himself without at least three more votes. Merz cannot rebuild the Union's eastern base by repeating the same federal script. The Landtag that meets in Magdeburg now has two blocs of 39 and a small party in the middle. The firewall is the only thing standing between those numbers and the first far-right state government in Germany since 1945. It is also the thing the AfD will spend the next weeks trying to crack, one CDU name at a time.