On Sunday, Germany crossed a boundary that has been in place since the Federal Republic’s founding in 1949.The Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 43.8% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, marking the first outright victory by a far-right party in a German state since the war.
It won 39 of the 83 seats in the Magdeburg parliament, three shy of a majority.
The outcome was similarly startling for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union. Its voting share fell to 17.2% from 37.1% in 2021.
The immediate economic impacts should be minimal. Saxony-Anhalt generates less than 2% of German output. The AfD more than doubled its vote in 2021, becoming the first far-right party to win a German state election since World War II.
At the national level, the outcome adds to Merz’s already catastrophic decline in popularity. Only 13% of Germans are pleased with the chancellor’s performance, the lowest reading for any incumbent chancellor in the history of the ARD-DeutschlandTrend poll. According to DAWUM’s most recent polling average, the AfD leads nationally with 27%, six points ahead of the CDU/CSU’s 21%.
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