AfD wins 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt, falling short of a majority as it seeks support to form government.
Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is “very, very close” to taking power, the party’s deputy parliamentary leader, Beatrix von Storch, has told the BBC after the party secured a historic victory in elections in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.
Preliminary results from Sunday’s election show the AfD won 43.8% of the vote, falling three seats short of an outright majority in the 83-seat state parliament.
The party is now seeking support from other parties or individual lawmakers to form a government.
Most German political parties have refused to work with the AfD, but von Storch called on its opponents to enter talks.
“You cannot say I do not accept the vote of the people,” she said.
Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he was “deeply shocked” by the result, describing it as “seismic” for both the country and his conservative CDU party.
“This election result is a seismic result not just in the country but also in my own political party and I take that very seriously,” Merz said.
The CDU’s share of the vote was almost halved to 17.2% in the state’s preliminary results.
Merz said it was not possible to return to “business as usual”, arguing that Germany needed “profound reforms” and that the CDU needed to “reach people at an emotional level”.
No far-right party has controlled a German state since World War Two. Governing at state level would give the AfD powers over areas including policing and local education.
Von Storch said the election results “were on the table and now democrats have to talk to [one] another. This is what democracy demands”.
She warned that if parties refused to work with the AfD, “then we might end up in severe chaos and maybe we have a new election”.
Her comments were echoed by AfD leader in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, who said the party had won a “clear mandate to govern”.
The state’s defeated premier, CDU’s Sven Schulze, also said the mandate to govern Saxony-Anhalt “now lies with the AfD”.
The AfD is currently heading for 39 seats, short of the 42 needed for an outright majority, although the result has not yet been finalised.
Siegmund said discussions with other parties began on Sunday night and could take days or weeks.
“We reach out to everybody first, we will have consultations and then we’ll see whether [there are] individual parliamentary groups or MPs who would be willing to help us,” he said.
Von Storch told the BBC that the AfD was also talking to individuals within the CDU group because they were “very, very unhappy with their own party”.
One possibility being discussed is an informal arrangement under which the left-wing populist BSW, which is expected to win five seats, could provide tacit support for an AfD minority government.
The BSW is also tough on migration and supports importing Russian gas.
The AfD has signalled its willingness to talk with other parties, but all except the BSW have refused to co-operate with the far-right party.
The AfD currently leads national opinion polls, ahead of Merz’s ruling conservatives and the Social Democrats, although its strongest support remains concentrated in eastern Germany.
The party also won the 2024 state election in neighbouring Thuringia but failed to secure enough seats to form a government.
Among its policies is the controversial plan for “remigration”, which is widely understood to mean mass deportations of migrants, although the party says it refers to deporting criminals and people who are in the country illegally.
Commentators and political opponents described the AfD’s victory as a watershed and a break with the past.
“This isn’t just about Saxony-Anhalt,” Siegmund told supporters overnight. “It’s a signal for the whole of Germany – a self-confident signal.”
US President Donald Trump posted a screenshot of the state’s projected results on his Truth Social platform on Sunday. Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev later shared a screengrab of Trump’s post and praised a “historic win for the pragmatic AfD”.
Dmitriev had earlier described the Russia-friendly AfD as “the party of hope and reason, co-operation truth and hope for Germany”.
Ahead of Germany’s federal election last year, US Vice-President JD Vance endorsed the party, a move criticised in Germany as political interference.
Polish centre-right Prime Minister Donald Tusk condemned the result, saying: “in Poland only idiots and traitors can rejoice at the triumph of the AfD”.
Asked about concerns over the AfD potentially gaining power in the state, von Storch said supporters were afraid of “losing our economy” and “losing our inner security”.
She said conservative voters were turning to alternative political parties because they were not being listened to.
She added that the party’s detractors should “Wake up and realise what happened in several other European states… The conservative parties will disappear from the landscape as it happened in Italy, as it’s about to happen in the UK, as it might also happen in France”.
