The neo-Nazi wave is no laughing matter. AfD wins a landslide victory in Saxony-Anhalt

The AfD won a landslide victory in the Saxony-Anhalt election with over 44 per cent of the vote. The CDU suffered a dramatic defeat, finishing just above 18 per cent – half its 2021 result. The Greens spring a surprise, entering the Magdeburg parliament with nearly 9 per cent. Die Linke also remains above 9 per cent. The SPD secured just over 8 per cent, as it did five years ago. The two parties in Friedrich Merz’s government together garnered just over 27 per cent of the vote. Voter turnout was impressive: over 80 per cent.

In a nail-biting night, the AfD nevertheless remains just short of an absolute majority of seats. The real unknown, set to keep us in suspense for hours, is the result of the populist left-wing Bsw, which is hovering around or below 5 per cent. If the Bsw gets in, the AfD will not have a majority of seats; if the Bsw is left out, the outcome will likely be decided by just a single seat. The Bsw is a force that could prove very useful to the AfD. The two parties are linked by their shared alignment with Moscow and have long been seeking dialogue. AfD leader Alice Weidel is jubilant and speaks of a “historic result”. In Saxony-Anhalt, the party has reached a new stage in a journey that began in 2015–2016 with the so-called migrant crisis and Angela Merkel’s ‘Willkommenspolitik’ (welcome policy), the real catalyst for the AfD’s success across Germany. The far right’s establishment in the East has now also been definitively confirmed: no longer a form of protest, but an assertion of identity.

The ideology behind this demand is rooted in the paradox of a section of the former GDR: a certain affinity for authoritarianism combined with an instinctive distrust of the state. The issue of immigration has also proved crucial in Saxony-Anhalt, where the proportion of immigrants is, however, very low (9 per cent). The truth is that, as is the case in some countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the anti-immigration narrative is gaining ground as a promise to prevent the multiculturalism that exists elsewhere from spreading to the East as well.

The CDU had governed Saxony-Anhalt continuously since 2002 and, in 2021, was still polling at 37 per cent. Sven Schulze, the Christian Democratic candidate, had been the incumbent Minister-President since January and had taken over from Reiner Haseloff precisely to attempt a last-minute electoral surge. It did not work. During the election campaign, Schulze did not consider Merz’s presence to be appropriate, viewing it as effectively detrimental. Whatever the outcome in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on 20 September – where the AfD is once again tipped to lead – it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine that the Christian Democrats’ next chancellor candidate will be Merz again. The chancellor had presented himself as the man capable of stopping the AfD, but his coalition government with the SPD has made it impossible to win back a portion of the centre-right’s former vote.

Meanwhile, it is the Merz government itself that may, sooner or later, have to deal with the spectre of a federal state governed by the far right. A scenario in which the AfD could gain control over the state police, education and critical infrastructure. Security concerns are bound to arise – concerns that have already been raised in Berlin for months: what classified information can be shared with a local executive so close to Moscow? How should one deal with a party that declares itself nationalist but seems, above all, to have Russian geopolitical interests at heart?

The fate of the ‘Brandmauer’ – the firewall against the AfD – also remains unknown: will it hold firm, or will someone within the eastern CDU seek dialogue? Some Christian Democrat politicians, including those in Saxony-Anhalt, are wondering why they should engage in dialogue with the radical left-wing party Die Linke but are unable to speak with the AfD.

In Saxony-Anhalt, should the AfD fail to come to power, the CDU could find itself faced with the extremely difficult task of forming another grand coalition government to counter the far right, or of pursuing a minority government.

Certainly, however, some within the CDU (and also within the SPD) have long believed that a medium-sized federal state such as Saxony-Anhalt could be the right place to pin the AfD down to unprecedented government responsibilities, using the region as a testing ground to erode the far-right narrative, without compromise, in a very tough political battle. It would be a dangerous game, but it might be the only one left. To do so, however, parties such as the CDU and the SPD would need to be in much better shape than they currently appear to be.