The eurosceptic party that burst onto the German political scene thirteen years ago under the name Alternative for Germany (AfD), and grew in votes as it radicalized towards the far right without ever managing to govern, now flirts with the possibility of finally achieving it.
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Saxony-Anhalt, a sparsely populated eastern German state, holds elections this Sunday, and the latest poll places the AfD as the most voted party with 43%, compared to 22% for the Christian Democratic CDU. The far-right would thus be on the verge of an absolute majority, the only formula that would allow them to bypass the firewall ( Brandmauer ) with which the other parties have always excluded them from federal, regional, and local government coalitions.
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However, there remains the possibility that smaller parties will fail to gain parliamentary representation, which could grant the AfD more seats with that same percentage.
The candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, wants to “make history,” as he says, by obtaining for the party what would be its first regional presidency. He is cheered on by the federal co-chairs, Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, convinced that this time the AfD will indeed gain power.
The AfD nears an absolute majority but could gain more seats if smaller parties do not enter the chamber
Founded in February 2013 by conservative and nationalist economists irritated by the euro crisis, the party later evolved towards the far right, making rejection of immigration and Islam its main electoral argument. In 2014 it gained representation in the European Parliament and entered a German regional parliament for the first time, that of Saxony.
Then, the 2015 humanitarian crisis, which moved the conservative chancellor Angela Merkel to open borders to refugees and led to the arrival of more than a million people from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan, became the AfD’s great xenophobic trump card.
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That same year, the founding president, economist Bernd Lucke, was ousted by the hardline leader, Saxon Frauke Petry. Gradually, the party established itself in all 16 state parliaments – although its strongholds are in the east, it also has presence in the west – and in 2017 made a splash by entering the Bundestag (Lower House of the federal Parliament) with 12.6% of the votes.
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Internal disputes between the hardline and pragmatic wings led the far-right to lose momentum in the following federal elections in 2021, and to cycle through different leaders while the hardline stance intensified to become very hardline.
Born eurosceptic, the party grew in votes by turning to the far-right anti-immigration stance
Thus, in the early elections of February 2025 – which brought conservative Friedrich Merz to the Chancellery – the AfD surged to become the second force with 20.8%. And in a full upward spiral, federal polls have given them first place for months, with up to 29% support, to the detriment of Merz’s CDU/CSU alliance, which hovers around 21%.
The current program combines rhetoric against immigration, multiculturalism, and Islam; identity nationalism, including historical revisionism about the Nazi regime; and an important socioeconomic aspect, seeking to win over those who feel neglected by the system. In the case of eastern voters, it also cultivates discontent with the “Berlin elites” and some nostalgia for the communist GDR era, which includes doses of sympathy towards Russia despite the war in Ukraine.
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On the AfD’s record is also the dishonor of being monitored by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), the intelligence services of the Interior Ministry, as “suspected of right-wing extremism.” Reason: according to the BfV, some of its postulates are “incompatible with the democratic constitutional order.”
Besides Saxony-Anhalt this Sunday, on the horizon is also September 20. There will be elections in another eastern state, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the AfD leads the polls with 35%, but where prospects of participating in the future governing coalition are nil. That day also sees elections in Berlin, an eastern state but with different electoral behavior. In the capital, the AfD hovers around 18%, on par with other parties in the race.
The firewall of the other parties has prevented the far-right from participating in government coalitions
In any case, the far-right party now overflows with self-confidence. “We will govern a federal state for the first time,” Alice Weidel said a few days ago in an interview on the public broadcaster ZDF, where she also stated that “the CDU will never again win a federal election.”
