On Sunday, voters in the state of Saxony-Anhalt in East-Central Germany will go to the polls to elect a new government. Election outcomes in relatively small German states might not seem that interesting to outside observers. Polling suggests, however, that this election could produce an outcome without precedent in postwar Germany: the far-right Alternative for Germany coming close to, or even winning, a majority. If so, it would appear to prove that Germany’s efforts to contain the far-right and keep voters from handing them power might not be working.
The trajectory of Saxony-Anhalt is stark. In the 2021 state election, the AfD took 20.8% of the vote, a distant second to the Christian Democratic Union’s 37.1%. Current polling puts the AfD at roughly 41-42%, nearly double its last result, with the CDU sitting at around 22-24%. The far-left Die Linke is at a distant third, near 13%. The current governing coalition of CDU, the Social Democrats, and the Free Democrats is expected to fall short of the seats needed to continue in power. If the current polls hold steady, the AfD would win the most votes by a wide margin, coming within a handful of seats of an outright majority.
Germany’s postwar governing system has, thus far, rested on a principle called the “Brandmauer,” or firewall. Under this, mainstream parties refuse to form governing coalitions with parties seen or classified as extremist.
In May 2025, Germany’s domestic intelligence service classified the AfD as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization. The party sued, and the agency voluntarily paused the label. While a court later formalized that pause, it also found some of the AfD’s positions “unmistakably unconstitutional.” At the federal level, the designation is currently frozen pending litigation.
But in five states, including Saxony-Anhalt, courts have already upheld the extremist label for the state-level AfD branches. The party heading toward a possible historic result on Sunday is, therefore, one whose own regional chapter is legally recognized as extremist.
The firewall has already been tested and occasionally strained at the local level, but there’s no answer yet as to what happens if voters hand the far right an outright majority. A Saxony-Anhalt result in which the AfD could govern without needing a coalition partner would make the firewall irrelevant, since it would no longer matter whether other parties are willing to work with it. Even if this outcome is unlikely, it’s worth thinking about because it would represent an entirely new phase for German democracy.
AfD supporters frame the party’s rise not as evidence of rising extremism but as a rejection of federal migration policy, a fight back against European Union overreach, and a challenge to the out-of-touch political establishment, among other things. Critics say that the scrutiny the party has drawn for its rhetoric and associations is evidence of the party’s extremism. That argument is playing out across Germany, not just in this one state.
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Even if the AfD support in Saxony-Anhalt is currently high, polling results should still be treated with caution. Surveys conducted weeks before an election can shift, and Saxony-Anhalt’s 2021 race itself skewed late when CDU support surged unexpectedly.
Whatever the final margin, however, the scale of the AfD’s polling lead here points to something worth following closely. Saxony-Anhalt might be a small state by population, but it could soon provide an answer to the question the rest of Germany has tried its best to avoid until now: what happens when the firewall meets a voting majority?
Rachel Rizzo is a senior fellow in the Strategic Studies Programme, Observer Research Foundation.