The Alternative for Germany party dominated a crucial state election on Sunday, according to near-final results, but fell short of the absolute majority that would have made it the first far-right party to govern part of the country since the Nazi era. If those results hold, the AfD, as the party is known by its German acronym, could still take power in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt in the coming weeks, depending on the outcome of negotiations between rival parties that have promised not to support an AfD government. Saxony-Anhalt is a relatively small state and the heart of the AfD’s power base in eastern Germany. But the result has shocked the country’s political system, which was designed after World War II to prevent extremist parties from returning to power. The political establishment has treated the AfD as a pariah, but the party took advantage of voters’ frustration on a wide range of economic and social issues to win around 44 percent of the vote in the state, and was set to claim 39 of the 83 seats in parliament. “We have made history and we are taking back our country,” Ulrich Siegmund, the party’s candidate to lead the state, told a cheering crowd Sunday afternoon. “It all starts here in Saxony-Anhalt.” Exit polls suggested that many of the AfD’s gains came at the expense of the center-right Christian Democrats, the party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz who also led the current government in the state. Amid record turnout, the AfD won the support of many Germans voting for the first time, including a wide plurality of young voters. The far-right AfD has come to lead national polls, while centrist parties are losing support and struggling to forge the consensus needed to marginalize the far-right party. The national intelligence agency has designated the AfD as a “suspected extremist” group. Some of the party’s leaders have downplayed the Holocaust and adopted Nazi slogans. Others have strong ties to Russia. The AfD has also said Islam is incompatible with the German constitution and has vowed to carry out mass deportations of immigrants. The AfD has rejected accusations of extremism as politically motivated. The party appealed to voters in Saxony-Anhalt with promises to revitalize a weakened economy, and its supporters, especially in eastern Germany, say the AfD is its best chance to break the traditional parties’ grip on political power. Sudha David-Wilp, vice president of foreign relations at the German Marshall Fund, said the result in Saxony-Anhalt “is a harbinger of the inability of traditional parties to form stable coalitions.” They will have to build such a coalition in Saxony-Anhalt if they hope to prevent the AfD from taking power. The Christian Democrats, who finished a distant second, could end up leading the state if they manage to build a coalition with four other parties: the center-left Social Democrats and Greens, the far-left Die Linke party and the populist Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, known by its German initials BSW. But some Christian Democrat leaders in the state have said they would not work with Die Linke, calling it extremist. BSW leaders have also said they would not support the current state leader, Sven Schulze of the Christian Democrats, or the AfD. Show more
