Some sample headlines:
Le Monde English: France stunned by the far-right's victory in Germany's Saxony-Anhalt regional elections
Reuters: Far-right win leaves Germany's Merz shaken as AfD plots path to power
New York Times: This Tiny Anti-Establishment Party May Put Germany’s Far Right in Power
Der Spiegel Substack: Germany’s Political Tailspin
Here is a good discussion by two scholars, Jackson Janes and Zsuzsanna Vegh, on the implications of the Saxony-Anhalt vote via the Krasno Global Events Series at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: (1)
The question of the AfD’s vote percentage in this smaller Bundesland is tied up with larger international disputes over whether democratic parties should maintain a “firewall” against far-right, antidemocratic parties. The “firewall” is a Germany-wide and EU-wide issue. But each election has its own peculiarities. This is an attempt to put the news and the post-election discussion into a broader context.
It’s worth noting that the Trump 2.0 Administration supports the AfD as one of their favored European parties:
U.S. President Donald Trump has congratulated Alternative for Germany (AfD) Tuesday for its landslide victory in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the far-right party won nearly 44 percent of the votes on Sunday.At that now-infamous appearance at the Munich Security Conference in 2025, our Opus Dei Vice President J.D. Vance lectured the European democracies about how they shouldn’t have a “firewall” against specific parties because it is undemocratic to do so.
“Wow! The Populist Party in Germany just had a really big night,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “They finally got tired of the absolutely horrible Immigration rules and regulations which have hurt Germany so badly.” He concluded his message with a German variant of his Make America Great Again acronym, “MGGA!!!” [Of course, Trump and/or his Truth Social assistant Natalie Harp got the AfD's name wrong!]
It is unusual for a sitting U.S. president to comment on German state elections, however the Trump administration has cultivated close ties with the AfD. U.S. Vice President JD Vance met the party’s co-leader Alice Weidel at the Munich Security Conference in February 2025 and criticized Germany’s “firewall” against the party. AfD officials visited the White House later that year, and senior Trump allies and administration figures have repeatedly backed the party. (2)
His argument, of course, was nonsense. In parliamentary systems, it is part of the system that any party that does not win a majority of seats will form a coalition with one or more parties to form a government. The fact that they choose some party over the others to form a government doesn’t mean they are being undemocratic to the parties that are not included in the coalition. It’s just how parliamentary systems work.
Saxony-Anhalt has a population of 2.2 million, making it one of the smaller German federal states. For comparison, it has a smaller population than the US State of Mississippi (3.0 million) but bigger than Wyoming (a little less than 600 thousand). Sachsen-Anhalt was part of the former East Germany, the German Democratic Republic (GDR). It was an important industrial state in the GDR but industry has declined in a major way since German unification in 1990.
This is a map showing Saxony-Anhalt in the north of Germany (Wikipedia):
The states in Germany all have parliamentary governments, as does Germany at the national level.
The six parties that won seats in the Saxony-Anhalt state parliament (Landtag) were the following. The parties are seated in their order in the left-to-right ranking, as follows:
The Left (Die Linke)
Social Democratic Party (SPD)
Greens Social Democratic Party (SPD)
Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
Bundnis Sarah Wageknecht (BSW)
Alternative für Deutschland (Afd)
This table shows them in that right-to-left configuration with their party colors (Wikipedia, 08/15/2026):
The Saxony-Anhalt Landtag has 83 seats, so it would take parties representing at least 42 seats to form a government. The AfD has 39 seats. And if we go by the ranking, it could form a majority with the BSW. But a two-seat majority is pretty thin. And the BSW takes it name from its leader Sarah Wageknecht who, to put it generously, has played a quirky political role since 1990, from a Communist hardliner to a xenophobic populist.
This means that the likelihood is the AfD would either have to form a government with CDU participation. They could also form a minority government that would be “tolerated” by the CDU or the BSW. The best chance the AfD has for a Landtag government that could survive for more than a few weeks would be a coalition government with the CDU as junior partner.
The “firewall” against the far right
There has been much discussion in the press about what in German politics is called a “firewall.” Since the German Federal Republic (West Germany) was founded in 1949, the pro-democracy parties have pursued a policy of not making coalitions with parties that show signs of not being pro-democracy. For decades, German politics had basically three parties: the SPD, the CDU/CSU (Christian Democratic conservative), and the Free Democratic Party (FDP). The FDP is a liberal party in the sense that “liberal” is used basically everywhere in the world but the US and Canada, i.e.: business-friendly, deregulation, civil liberties, austerity economics, limited government.
(The CDU and the CSU (Christian Social Union) operate as a cooperative bloc in national elections. The CSU is essentially a Bavarian party, which is generally more conservative than the CDU.)
The German Green Party – officially Bündnis 90/Die Grünen – was founded in 1980 and has played a “kingmaker” role in national policy by winning enough votes to be a junior partner to the SPD and the CDU.
The Left Party is historically an organizational descendant of the former East German Communist Party (more-or-less).
Although smaller parties were active, from 1949 to 1989 (Fall of the Berlin Wall) Germany’s politics was basically a three-party system. The laws in Germany and Austria and in various other European democracies allow for banning parties that don’t support the basic democratic and constitutional governments. While that can sound ham-fisted to Americans alert to civil-liberties violations, in practice the American legal system does the same thing. There are legal definitions of what legally constitutes a political party.
So when we hear about the AfD in Germany or its model party the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) being far-right and anti-democracy parties, that is a political judgment, and a scholarly one for professional researchers and political scientists. And politics is about, well, making political judgments.
It has been the practice in Germany and Austria and various other countries since the Second World War has been to avoid coalition governments at the national or state level with far-right parties. This was based in particular on how both Mussolini and Hitler came to power with the endorsement and support of conservative, non-fascist parties.
But 1922 and 1932 were a long time ago. So, the argument goes, why not let them into a coalition government and see if that “tames” them? The record with the FPÖ in Austria is clear. After decades in which the FPÖ took place in state governments and had two stints as a coalition partner with the Austrian Christian-conservative ÖVP at the national level –which went really badly both times – the FPÖ is basically as extremist and irresponsible as it ever was. (And that’s putting it generously!)
Another line of argument, also plausible on its surface, is that the far-right parties are responding to voters’ feeling of “economic discontent” (to use a favorite phrase of lazy US legacy media commentators) or vague alienation or social-status jitters when people look at immigrants all over the place. It’s not that these kinds of commentaries are completely wrong. But those who use them often try to avoid more specific and relevant observations. Usually this is accompanied by advice to the more mainstream and pro-democracy parties to try to make constructive compromises with far-right critics and cooperate on constructive policies.
In the European context, xenophobia has been a remains central focus for far-right parties, certainly including the AfD and the FPÖ. Experience from France, Britain, Italy, Germany, Austria and the US and other places as well has shown remarkably consistently that when the conservative parties try to attract voters by aping the xenophobic politics of the far right, it weakens support for the conservative parties and increases support for the far-right parties.
Harry Truman addressing the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), a left-liberal activist group, told them in 1952:
I've seen it happen time after time. When the Democratic candidate allows himself to be put on the defensive and starts apologizing for the New Deal and the fair Deal, and says he really doesn't believe in them, he is sure to lose. The people don't want a phony Democrat. If it's a choice between a genuine Republican, and a Republican in Democratic clothing, the people will choose the genuine article, every time; that is, they will take a Republican before they will a phony Democrat, and I don't want any phony Democratic candidates in this campaign. [emphasis added] (3)Something similar happens in European elections, as well. It’s just that with parliamentary systems, there are typically several significant parties from which to choose, not just two.
Notes:
(1) The Rise of the Far-Right AfD Party in Germany with Dr. Jackson Janes & Zsuzsanna Vegh. DrasnoUNC YouTube channel 09/14/2026. https://youtu.be/cPZzwjoZQO4?si=ovcklsLrqKvUWZon (Accessed: 2026-16-09).
(2) Zakharova, Daria (2026): Trump hails AfD win in Saxony-Anhalt. Politico EU 09/09/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-congratulates-afd-saxony-anhalt-election-win/> (Accessed: 2026-16-09).
(3) LibQuotes. <https://libquotes.com/harry-s-truman/quote/lbx4f8m> (Accessed: 2026-16-09).
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