AfD could win first state government in Saxony-Anhalt

Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany could move closer to leading its first state government in Saxony-Anhalt, where polls put the party ahead before the regional election on September 6, 2026.

The AfD has polled at 40 percent or higher in the eastern German state for months. Its top candidate, 35-year-old Ulrich Siegmund, has said he wants to “make history” and use a win in the state of 2.1 million people to help push the party toward national power in 2029.

It is not certain that the AfD would win enough votes to govern alone. Its route to power may depend on whether smaller parties clear Germany's five percent threshold for entering parliament. The BSW party, which is economically left-leaning but takes a harder line on immigration, has signalled it may support the AfD forming a government.

Other major parties have maintained a “firewall” of non-cooperation with the AfD. The incumbent state premier, Sven Schulze of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's centre-right Christian Democratic Union, leads a multi-party coalition and has campaigned against the AfD. The CDU is polling at 22-24 percent.

Mainstream parties including the CDU, Social Democrats and Greens hope to gain enough seats to form a governing coalition. One possible outcome would be a minority government that seeks support from the far-left Die Linke party on individual votes.

The election is also a test for Merz, who has promised to curb the AfD's rise by reviving the economy and restricting irregular immigration. Oliver Lembcke of Ruhr University in Bochum said an AfD win in Saxony-Anhalt would be a personal defeat for Merz and would show that the firewall strategy had failed at the ballot box.

Siegmund's campaign promises include what he calls a “deportation and remigration offensive” targeting migrants without settled status, a ban on LGBTQ pride rainbow flags in public schools and an end to new wind farms.

The AfD's Saxony-Anhalt branch is classified by Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, as a “right-wing extremist” organisation. The BfV said in its latest report that many AfD politicians in the state use language that demonises migrants and routinely brand Muslim refugees as criminals, which it said violates the principle of human dignity. The AfD accuses the BfV of political interference and wants major reform of the state-level agency.

Some AfD plans may face legal or constitutional limits. A Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology analysis said 21 of the party's 56 planned migration measures could only be implemented at national or European level. Media law experts have also said Siegmund's plan to cancel the contract governing the regional public broadcaster would probably clash with the constitutional duty to provide a comprehensive public broadcasting service.

The party also wants to lift Saxony-Anhalt's ban on home schooling, expand Russian teaching, restart student exchanges with Russia that have been suspended since 2022, halt wind power expansion and restrict new solar installations. Siegmund has proposed birth payments and free meals for children in schools and kindergartens, while acknowledging that not all measures could happen at once.