AfD takes 43.8 percent in Saxony-Anhalt but misses a majority by three seats

The Alternative for Germany won 43.8 percent of the second vote in Saxony-Anhalt on 6 September and still fell three seats short of governing alone. The state election office in Halle published the preliminary count early on 7 September: 576,037 list votes, 39 of 83 Landtag seats, and 38 of the 41 single-member constituencies.

An absolute majority in Magdeburg is 42 seats. The remaining 44 seats are split among five parties that have all said they will not sit in cabinet with the AfD. That arithmetic, not the size of the win, now decides who runs the state.

The Christian Democratic Union of outgoing minister-president Sven Schulze took 17.2 percent and 15 seats. It is the party's worst result in any Saxony-Anhalt Landtag election since 1990. The CDU also lost every constituency. Schulze himself was beaten in Magdeburg III by AfD candidate Christian Mertens, who won with 35.2 percent, the weakest first-vote score of any AfD constituency winner.

SPD leader Armin Willingmann finished on 9.3 percent and eight seats. The Greens took 8.9 percent and eight seats. Die Linke took 8.6 percent and eight seats, including the three constituencies the AfD did not win, two of them in Halle. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance crossed the five-percent line with 5.3 percent and five seats. The Free Democrats finished on 2.6 percent and leave the chamber. They now sit in six of Germany's 16 state parliaments.

Turnout was 77.8 percent from 1,328,211 valid second votes. That is the highest participation at a Landtag election in the state since reunification and the highest at any German state election since Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in 1998, when turnout reached 79.4 percent. After 1990 only Berlin in 1990 and Saarland in 1994 recorded higher state-election turnouts.

Compared with 6 June 2021 the AfD more than doubled its list share, from 20.8 percent and 23 seats. The CDU dropped from 37.1 percent and 40 seats. Die Linke slipped from 11 percent. The SPD rose from 8.4 percent. The Greens rose from 5.9 percent. BSW did not exist at the last election.

AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund, 35, won his own constituency of Genthin with 49.0 percent against CDU candidate Thomas Staudt on 24.0 percent. In 2021 Staudt had held that seat with 31.3 percent, with Siegmund second on 26.6 percent. Siegmund had been chosen as lead candidate at a Magdeburg party conference with 98.3 percent of the delegate vote. The strongest first-vote result of the night was Reiner Kretschmann in Eisleben on 55.6 percent, followed by Hans-Thomas Tillschneider in Querfurt on 54.9 percent and Jonas Dirk in Weißenfels and Matthias Büttner in Staßfurt, both on 53.4 percent. Almost the entire new AfD group will be made up of constituency winners. Only one list seat is needed to fill the 39.

On election night Siegmund called the result a mandate to govern. He told ZDF he would govern with a majority of one vote if needed, reversing a campaign line that he wanted only a stable majority. He dismissed a BSW offer of a cross-party minister-president as muddle. Party co-leader Tino Chrupalla said Siegmund would be the next premier. The Saxony-Anhalt office of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution continues to classify the state AfD as confirmed right-wing extremist.

The so-called firewall, the refusal of CDU, SPD, Greens and Linke to enter coalition with the AfD, is now being tested against a party that holds nearly half the chamber and almost every constituency. Siegmund has already pointed to the possibility that individual deputies could switch after the constitutive session. He has also left new elections on the table if talks produce no government. A minority cabinet would need issue-by-issue votes from parties that spent the campaign promising not to provide them.

Saxony-Anhalt has about 2.2 million residents and sits on the Elbe between Lower Saxony and Saxony. The Landtag building is on Magdeburg's Domplatz. Schulze had come to the premiership from seven years in the European Parliament and from the state economy ministry. He became CDU state chairman in 2021. That path ended in a night when his party won no direct seat and less than half the vote share it held five years ago.

The constitutive session has not yet been dated. Until then Schulze remains in office in a caretaker role. Federal parties now have a fixed map and no other state election before 2027 in which to pretend the numbers are local weather. Magdeburg is the first German state chamber in the post-war series where the largest party is also the party the others have sworn not to speak to, and where that party still lacks three seats.