AfD takes 44.5 percent in Saxony-Anhalt, short of a solo majority

Alternative for Germany took 44.5 percent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday, according to the first ARD/Infratest dimap exit poll, more than doubling the share of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic Union. The CDU, which has led the eastern state since 2002, fell to 18.5 percent from 37.1 percent in 2021. The AfD itself rose from 20.8 percent five years ago.

ZDF's later projection put the AfD at 44.3 percent and the CDU at 18.3 percent. An ARD forecast late on Sunday evening had the AfD at 44.4 percent, a gain of 23.6 points, and the CDU at 18.4 percent, a drop of 18.7 points. In each case the far-right party sat just short of the 50 percent that would give it an outright majority of seats in the Magdeburg Landtag.

About 1.7 million people were eligible to vote in a state of 2.1 million. Turnout was the highest in a generation. ARD recorded more than 65 percent of eligible voters having already cast a ballot by 4 p.m. Final estimates put participation at 76.5 percent, and some German reports said it approached 80 percent once postal votes were counted. In 2021 it was 60.3 percent.

Die Linke was third on 9.3 to 9.5 percent. Alliance 90/The Greens stood between 8.7 and 9 percent. The Social Democrats sat at 8 to 8.7 percent. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance hovered on the 5 percent threshold needed to re-enter the chamber. The Free Democrats were projected at about 2 percent and will miss the Landtag.

Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD's 35-year-old lead candidate, told supporters the party had done what it set out to do. "We have made history in this state," he said. Co-leader Alice Weidel called the result historic. Siegmund said the party's hand was "always outstretched" to any partner willing to change course in Magdeburg. Most other parties have already ruled out sitting in an AfD-led cabinet.

That refusal is the core of the night's unfinished business. If the count stays below an absolute majority of seats, the AfD cannot form a government alone and the remaining parties would have to assemble a coalition with almost no shared programme. The CDU under outgoing minister-president Sven Schulze would have to work with Linke, Greens and SPD, a combination that has no recent precedent in the state and would still be smaller than the AfD bloc if BSW also enters.

Some reporting noted that BSW has not closed the door on talking to the AfD. If both parties clear the line and sit together, their combined seats could command the chamber even without an AfD solo majority. That possibility is what Berlin is watching. The federal domestic intelligence service classifies the Saxony-Anhalt AfD association as right-wing extremist. The party already won Thuringia's 2024 Landtag election with 32.8 percent and was then locked out of office by a cordon of the other groups.

Sunday's result is larger than that Thuringia win and larger than any previous AfD state score. It is also the first time since 1945 that a party of the far right has come within touching distance of running a German state government. Al Jazeera's Dominic Kane, reporting from Magdeburg, put the question in the simplest terms: the AfD has the lion's share of the vote, but it is not yet clear whether that is enough to take the keys.

The vote lands on a Chancellor already managing an Iran war, a Ukraine mediation track and a dispute with Moscow over drones. Merz visited Isar Aerospace's Norwegian launch site earlier this year to talk about European launch independence. His party has now been cut in half in a state it treated as a conservative hold. The CDU's collapse, not only the AfD's rise, is the number that will travel to the next state contests and to the federal debate on the Brandmauer, the fire-wall against cooperation with the AfD.

Votes were still being counted late on Sunday. Official seat numbers will decide whether Siegmund can claim the Staatskanzlei or whether Saxony-Anhalt faces weeks of talks among parties that spent the campaign explaining why they would not sit together. The arithmetic is tight either way.