AfD takes 43.8 percent in Saxony-Anhalt and still falls three seats short

Alternative for Germany won 43.8 percent of the list vote in Saxony-Anhalt on 6 September. The official preliminary count from the state returning officer gives the party 39 seats in an 83-member Landtag. That is three short of a majority. The Christian Democratic Union, which has led the state for 24 years, fell to 17.2 percent and 15 seats.

The result more than doubles the AfD's 20.8 percent from 2021. It is the party's strongest showing in any German state election. It is also the weakest Landtag result the CDU has recorded in Saxony-Anhalt. Chancellor Friedrich Merz's party had taken 37.1 percent five years ago under Reiner Haseloff. This time the incumbent minister-president was Sven Schulze. He lost his Magdeburg III constituency to the AfD's Christian Mertens, who won on 35.2 percent.

Turnout reached 77.8 percent of 1,706,851 registered voters. That is the highest participation at a Landtag election since Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 1998. About 1.33 million ballots were cast. Invalid list votes were under one percent.

How the chamber now sits

The AfD took 38 of 41 direct mandates. Reiner Kretschmann won Eisleben with 55.6 percent. Hans-Thomas Tillschneider took Querfurt with 54.9 percent. Jonas Dirk in Weißenfels and Matthias Büttner in Staßfurt each recorded 53.4 percent. Lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund won Genthin with 49.0 percent against the CDU's Thomas Staudt.

List shares for the other parties that cleared five percent were: SPD 9.3 percent (eight seats), Greens 8.9 percent (eight), Die Linke 8.6 percent (eight), and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance 5.3 percent (five). The Free Democrats took 2.6 percent and leave the chamber. A four-party bloc of CDU, SPD, Greens and Left also totals 39 seats. That is the same number as the AfD. BSW's five seats now decide whether a government can be formed without the largest party.

Saxony-Anhalt's domestic intelligence service classifies the state's AfD branch as confirmed right-wing extremist. The CDU, SPD, Greens and Left have all said they will not enter a coalition with it. Siegmund had said before polling day that he would stand for minister-president only if the party won an absolute majority. After the count he claimed a mandate to govern anyway. AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla named him as the next minister-president and said the party had "cut the CDU in half." Alice Weidel called the result historic.

What Berlin has to absorb

Thorsten Frei, leader of the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag, called the night a turning point and said conservatives must ask why they no longer reach these voters. Chancellery minister Nina Warken used the word rupture for the CDU. Sahra Wagenknecht said the "firewall" policy had failed and that another coalition built only to exclude the AfD would insult the electorate.

Siegmund's campaign promised a harder line on migration, separate school classes for refugee children, and limits on Islamic public expression. Those pledges now sit against a chamber in which he cannot pass a budget alone. Any CDU-led minority or a BSW arrangement would have to survive confidence votes in Magdeburg while Merz's federal coalition absorbs the signal from an eastern state it once treated as safe CDU ground.

The Landeswahlausschuss still has to certify the final numbers. Seat totals can move by one if the official count shifts a close constituency. On the published figures, though, Saxony-Anhalt has produced a first: a party to the right of the Union as the clear first force, a governing party halved, and no majority that does not require either the AfD or the party that exists to reject it.

Coalition talks, if they start this week, will show whether the firewall still holds when both sides of it have 39 seats and five BSW members can choose which way the state tilts.