Exit polls indicate that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is projected to win 44.5% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, potentially making it the first far-right party to lead a German state since the Second World War. The ruling conservative CDU trails in second place with 18.5%.
This result would double the party's vote share from five years ago in the region of 2.1 million people. The outcome follows warnings during the campaign that Germany's long-standing firewall against extreme-right parties could be broken.
Coalition prospects and mandate claims
Votes will be counted overnight, and it remains unclear whether the AfD will secure an absolute majority in the state legislature, which would allow it to govern alone. A 44.5% result could produce a majority if enough smaller parties fall short of the 5% threshold required to take seats in parliament.
Senior party officials said the initial results showed the party had won a "mandate" to govern. Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD's 35-year-old candidate for state governor, told reporters after the exit poll that the party had "written history." Suggesting other parties should be open to coalition talks, he said: "As a democrat, I always extend a hand to other parties. We're not concerned with firewalls. We're concerned with Germany."
AfD national leader Alice Weidel told German broadcaster ZDF: "This is a historic result, and it is a very clear mandate to govern."
Campaign controversies and party classification
During the regional election campaign, Siegmund announced that his party would remove refugee children and disabled children from mainstream education and place them into segregated classes, claiming that the "inclusion experiment" in schools had failed. The AfD is classed as a "proven right-wing extremist" by the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), Germany's equivalent to MI5.
The result piles pressure on German chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose CDU has led the state for 24 years and regarded it as a natural stronghold. Siegmund described Merz as the party's "most important campaign helper" during the election campaign.
Other parties' performance
Germany's Minister of the Chancellery, Nina Warken, called the result a "watershed moment" for the CDU and a "very, very difficult result." In the exit poll, the centre-left SPD slipped by half a point to 8%, while the Left Party secured 9.5%. The Greens were the only other party to make gains, climbing three points to 9%, while the left-wing BSW was on exactly 5%, leaving them with an anxious wait to see whether they reached the vital threshold.
