AfD demands coalition talks after near-majority win in German state election

The Alternative for Germany, a far-right party that has spent years on the margins of German politics, is now within reach of governing a state for the first time since World War Two. In elections held Sunday in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD captured 43.8 percent of the vote—a historic result that left the party three seats short of an outright majority in the 83-seat state parliament. The party's deputy parliamentary leader, Beatrix von Storch, told the BBC on Monday that the AfD was "very, very close" to taking power and was actively seeking support from other parties or individual lawmakers to form a government.

The scale of the shift in German politics is difficult to overstate. The conservative CDU, which has long dominated the state and currently leads the federal government under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, saw its vote share nearly halved to 17.2 percent. Merz responded to the results by saying he was "deeply shocked," describing the outcome as "seismic"—not just for the country but for his own party. He acknowledged that the CDU could not simply return to normal operations and that the country needed "profound reforms" and his party needed to connect with voters "at an emotional level."

The path forward remains uncertain. The AfD is exploring multiple routes to power. Von Storch said the party was in talks with individual CDU members who were "very, very unhappy with their own party." Another possibility involves an informal arrangement with the BSW, a left-wing populist party set to win five seats, which could provide tacit support for a minority AfD government. The BSW, like the AfD, takes a hard line on immigration and supports importing Russian gas. Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD's leader in Saxony-Anhalt, said discussions with other parties began Sunday night and could take days or weeks to resolve. He also left open the possibility of calling another election if negotiations stalled, saying he did not want to compromise on his party's policy goals.

Saxony-Anhalt, a state of 2.1 million people in eastern Germany, would give the AfD control over policing and local education if it forms a government. The party's proposed policies for the state are deeply controversial. They include segregating child refugees into separate school classes and establishing a task force to detain and deport migrants who no longer have legal status to remain in Germany. The AfD's national platform includes what it calls "remigration"—a term widely understood to mean mass deportations of migrants, though the party claims it refers only to deporting criminals and those in the country illegally.

The result has reverberated far beyond Saxony-Anhalt. Merz described it as the worst defeat the CDU had suffered "in years, if not decades" and said upcoming regional elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin would carry "increasing significance." The AfD already leads national opinion polls ahead of both Merz's CDU and the Social Democrats. The party won the 2024 state election in neighboring Thuringia but failed to secure enough seats to govern there. Siegmund told supporters that the Saxony-Anhalt result was "a signal for the whole of Germany—a self-confident signal."

The international response has been swift and divided. US President Donald Trump posted a screenshot of the projected results on his Truth Social platform. Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev then shared Trump's post and praised what he called a "historic win for the pragmatic AfD," having previously described the party as "the party of hope and reason." Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, by contrast, said that "in Poland only idiots and traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD." The endorsements from American and Russian figures have added another layer to the political turbulence in Germany, where such foreign backing has been criticized as interference.

Von Storch framed the AfD's surge as a response to voter anxiety. She said supporters feared "losing our economy" and "losing our inner security," and that conservative voters were turning to the AfD because they felt unheard by established parties. She pointed to political shifts in other European countries, arguing that conservative parties were disappearing from the political landscape in Italy, facing decline in the UK, and potentially facing similar fates in France. The AfD's classification by German domestic intelligence as "right-wing extremist" in Saxony-Anhalt is rejected by Siegmund, who is 35 years old and has led the party's rapid rise in the state.

The immediate question is whether the AfD can convert its electoral strength into governing power. Most German political parties have refused to work with the far-right party, but von Storch argued that refusing to negotiate would be undemocratic. "You cannot say, I do not accept the vote of the people," she told the BBC. She also warned that if parties refused to cooperate with the AfD, "then we might end up in severe chaos and maybe we have a new election." Even Sven Schulze, the CDU's defeated premier in Saxony-Anhalt, acknowledged that "the mandate to govern now lies with the AfD." What happens in the coming weeks will determine whether that mandate translates into actual power.