5 hard truths after AfD wins German state election

It is a seismic moment in German politics, one that may signal a much bigger change is coming with consequences that reach far beyond its borders.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD)—a favorite of President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement and strongly endorsed by billionaire Elon Musk—has won 43.8 percent in Saxony-Anhalt’s state election in the preliminary count, more than doubling its 2021 share and taking 39 of 83 seats, three short of the 42 needed to govern alone.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative CDU took just 17.2 percent and 15 seats, while turnout rose to 77.8 percent from 60.3 percent in 2021. He faces some difficult choices ahead.

The result reads best as five separate stress tests, and they do not all point the same way.

1: Merz Cannot Triangulate His Way Out

Merz has tightened migration policy and asylum claims have fallen. A DW fact check found first-time applications down 35.4 percent year over year in the first half of 2026, while noting that the decline began before he took office.

The research firm Infratest dimap’s provisional voter-transfer analysis attributed about 170,000 AfD votes to previous nonvoters and 82,000 to voters who had backed the CDU in 2021.

The AfD also overtook the CDU on perceived economic competence: 30 percent to 28 percent, reversing an 8-to-41 deficit in 2021.

The CDU now faces two different problems: recovering defectors and competing for voters the AfD has newly mobilized.

One eastern state cannot be extrapolated across Germany, but Merz’s vulnerability here plainly extends beyond migration.

That is a longer-term and much deeper problem than the usual challenge of German coalition assembly.

2: Ukraine Can Lose Without Germany Turning Pro-Russia

Foreign policy is federal, and no state parliament can stop a weapons shipment.

Yet 57 percent backed the AfD position against further German weapons deliveries to Ukraine. The AfD is in favor of normalizing relations with Russia again.

At the same time, 48 percent called Russia a serious threat to German security, compared with 45 percent who did not, and 31 percent of AfD voters also saw a serious threat.

The risk to Kyiv is a public that can distrust Moscow while increasingly preferring fewer weapons for Ukraine.

Germany’s federal government remains firmly committed to Ukraine and has provided or earmarked about €57.6 billion in military aid since Russia’s full-scale invasion began.

Saxony-Anhalt cannot change that policy. But its voters nevertheless show why opposition to arms cannot safely be treated as synonymous with sympathy for Russia.

German voters in the state have placed their economic preferences above their concerns about the Kremlin.

3: The Firewall Can Block Office, Not Political Gravity

The firewall—intended to block far-right parties from power in Germany for obvious historical reasons—did its immediate job.

The AfD is three seats short of a majority, and the other parties reject an AfD coalition. Saxony-Anhalt’s domestic intelligence service classifies the state AfD branch as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization, a designation the party is challenging.

But the political arithmetic is still punishing. CDU, SPD and Greens hold 31 seats between them; the Left has eight and BSW five, though the CDU rules out coalition with the Left.

A majority of voters chose parties other than the AfD, and the firewall can still deny it executive power.

Containment and persuasion are different jobs, however. The larger the AfD grows, the more cumbersome governing around it becomes—and the easier it is politically for the party to depict its rivals as one anti-AfD bloc.

And cohering as a politically incoherent anti-AfD bloc for the purpose of keeping the party out of power does little—nothing, really—to address the material issues fueling its rise.

4: MAGA’s European Allies Aren’t America’s Allies

For MAGA’s international project, this is good news.

Elon Musk congratulated the AfD, Richard Grenell hailed its victory, and Trump posted the preliminary result without comment.

At the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, JD Vance told European leaders there was “no room for firewalls.”

But here comes the nationalism paradox. The AfD manifesto praises Trump’s administration as an ally against “wokeness” and internet censorship.

Yet in the same document it says German and American geopolitical and economic interests increasingly diverge. It also opposes long-range American weapons on German soil and advocates lifting sanctions on Russia.

In January, AfD co-chairs Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla criticized Trump over Venezuela and Greenland.

MAGA has a coherent answer: America First never promised compliant allies.

Trump has explicitly pushed European countries toward greater burden-sharing and self-reliance, and a more sovereign Europe can fit that agenda even when its governments disagree with Washington.

But the key distinction is geopolitical influence. An ideological victory for nationalism abroad can produce partners more willing to resist American preferences.

As the Iran war shows, Trump has little tolerance for allies not willing to follow the U.S. into every battle.

America First can encourage Germany First. And Germany First reserves the right to say no to Washington.

5: Victory Ends the AfD’s Protest Party Alibi

Before the election, the AfD’s leader in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, said he would seek the state’s premiership only with an absolute majority.

After falling three seats short, he revised that position on election night and offered cooperation to parties or individual lawmakers prepared to support the AfD’s proposed political shift.

At 43.8 percent, the protest-party defense becomes harder to sustain because electoral success raises expectations of governing competence. You can talk the talk, can you walk the walk? Governing is not campaigning, and leadership is not activism.

The Halle Institute for Economic Research found that Saxony-Anhalt lost 40,580 German workers over the past decade while gaining 51,960 foreign workers, with nearly a third of German employees now 55 or older.

Its modeled scenarios suggest lower foreign inflows could leave thousands of jobs unfilled. Those are projections, not established future outcomes.

The AfD can fairly say it still lacks a majority and has never governed the state. Yet a party asking voters to regard it as a government-in-waiting increasingly invites judgment on how it would manage the real trade-offs governing demands.