The victory of 43.8% obtained on Sunday by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, which represents less than 3% of the German electorate, cannot be transformed into a verdict for the entire country, but neither can it be treated as an East German accident. The AfD doubled its score, won the elections in all 218 localities of the state and became the dominant party among workers and many categories of young and middle-aged voters. In practice, Germany woke up after the elections in Saxony-Anhalt to a reality that its political class had long tried to keep behind a „protective wall”: the AfD categorically won the regional elections, with double the votes obtained in 2021 and came within three mandates of an absolute majority.
The CDU, the party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, which had led the state since 2002, collapsed from 37.1% to 17.2%. The AfD won 39 of the 83 seats, the CDU only 15, and the SPD, the Greens and Die Linke eight each. The Sahra Wagenknecht – BSW – alliance entered the regional parliament with five seats, while the FDP was eliminated after falling to 2.6%.
This was after an election in which voter turnout reached around 77.8%, compared to 60.3% in 2021. So the victory cannot be explained by absenteeism, the mobilization of a radical minority or the resignation of opponents. On the contrary, society mobilized massively, and this mobilization primarily benefited the AfD.
Saxony-Anhalt has 2,120,252 inhabitants and around 1.7 million voters. Its electorate represents around 2.9% of the approximately 59.2 million Germans eligible to vote. Around 1.32 million people took part in the regional elections, and the AfD received around 580,000 votes. This represents around 1% of the entire German electorate. Therefore, 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt does not mean that 43.8% of Germany has switched to the AfD, but the fact that the state only represents 2.9% of the electorate does not make the result irrelevant. Infratest dimap data shows that…
