AfD takes 43.8 percent in Saxony-Anhalt and still cannot form a government

The Alternative for Germany won 43.8 percent of the list vote in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday and still left Magdeburg without a government. Official preliminary figures from the state returning officer give the party 576,037 second votes, 39 of 83 Landtag seats, and 38 of the 41 single-member constituencies. That is three seats short of an absolute majority. Ulrich Siegmund had said before polling day that he would stand for minister-president only with that majority in hand.

The Christian Democratic Union, which had run the state under Minister-President Sven Schulze, dropped from 37.1 percent in 2021 to 17.2 percent. It won no constituency seats. The three districts that did not go to the AfD went to Die Linke, two in Halle and one in Magdeburg. Christian Mertens of the AfD even took Magdeburg III against Schulze himself, on 35.2 percent of the first vote.

Turnout was 77.8 percent of 1,706,851 registered voters. That is the highest figure at a Landtag election since Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 1998. Tagesschau noted that no party in the 36 years since reunification had previously posted a result this high in Saxony-Anhalt. The AfD more than doubled its 20.8 percent from 2021. Reiner Kretschmann took Eisleben with 55.6 percent of the first vote, the strongest constituency score of the night. Hans-Thomas Tillschneider took Querfurt with 54.9 percent. Siegmund won Genthin with 49 percent against the CDU's Thomas Staudt.

The remaining seats split across a crowded field. The Social Democrats took 9.3 percent and eight seats. The Greens took 8.9 percent and eight seats. Die Linke took 8.6 percent and eight seats. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance crossed the five-percent line with 5.3 percent and five seats, its first entry into the Magdeburg Landtag. The Free Democrats finished on 2.6 percent and are out.

Arithmetic now collides with the firewall. A bloc of CDU, SPD, Greens and Left would also hold 39 seats, the same as the AfD, and would still need the BSW's five votes to pass legislation. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has ruled out working with Die Linke at federal level. All four of those parties have also ruled out a coalition with the AfD, whose Saxony-Anhalt branch the state domestic intelligence service lists as confirmed right-wing extremist. Tino Chrupalla, the party's national co-leader, asked CDU deputies on ARD on Monday to allow a "centre-right conservative majority." Siegmund called the result a signal to Berlin.

About 83,000 former CDU voters moved to the AfD, according to the first detailed flows published with the count. Schulze blamed part of the collapse on the federal government. Merz is the most unpopular chancellor in the postwar polling series, and his party has two more state tests on 20 September, in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. Nina Warken, the chancellery minister, called the Magdeburg result a caesura for the CDU. Polish foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski called it a very worrying sign. Allies of Emmanuel Macron in Paris spoke of the need for a grand coalition in the east rather than any opening to the AfD.

The Landtag that sits on Magdeburg's Domplatz now has 83 members instead of the previous 69 because overhang and leveling seats expanded with the AfD's constituency sweep. Almost the entire AfD group will be made of direct winners. That changes the daily business of the house. Committee chairs, the speakership and the first confidence vote all require deals that none of the published positions currently support.

Saxony-Anhalt is not a large state. It holds about 2.1 million people and sits between Lower Saxony and Saxony on the Elbe. The vote still matters because it is the first time since 1945 that a party of the far right has come this close to running a German state government on its own numbers. The next two weeks will show whether the CDU's refusal to deal either left or right can survive a second and third count on the same terms.