Germany‘s biggest hard-Right party is set for a ‘historic’ victory in a key regional election, exit polls show.
The anti-immigration and Moscow-friendly Alternative for Germany (AfD) took at least 44.4 per cent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt in the ex-communist east, according to exit polls by two public broadcasters.
The party is now on the brink of becoming the first hard-Right party to run a state government in Germany since the Second World War.
‘We have made history today,’ said a jubilant Ulrich Siegmund, the 35-year-old lead candidate for AfD in the state.
The AfD was far ahead of the centre-Right CDU of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, which stood at 18.3 per cent. The centre-Left Social Democrats and environmental Greens both cleared the minimum threshold to enter state parliament with around 8 to 9 per cent each.
It is still too early to say whether the hard-Right AfD will have enough votes for the absolute majority which would allow it to govern a state alone for the first time, public broadcasters ARD and ZDF said.
Top candidate of the hard-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD), Ulrich Siegmund, and his wife Julia Siegmund, cast their votes in the Saxony-Anhalt state election at a polling station in Tangermuende, Germany, September 6, 2026
Ulrich Siegmund (right), AfD’s main candidate in the Saxony-Anhalt state election, celebrates with the party’s national co-leader Alice Weidel (left) after exit polls showed the party set for victory
Members and supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party react after the first exit poll results were announced on public television at the AfD’s election party following Saxony-Anhalt’s state elections in Magdeburg, eastern Germany on September 6, 2026
Alice Weidel, the AfD’s national co-leader, praised the party’s result as ‘sensational’ and said the party had ‘received a very clear mandate to govern here’.
The AfD has until now faced a policy of Brandmauer – which translates as ‘firewall’ – meaning other mainstream German parties have refused to negotiate with or go into coalition with them.
But the results of Sunday’s election show that mainstream parties’ longstanding policy of refusing co-operation with the AfD has been rejected by voters, the party’s other national co-leader Tino Chrupalla claimed.
Those parties ‘were voted out – or rather, the voters delivered a clear verdict – and I can only encourage them to recognise that the “firewall” has been definitively rejected by the voters today,’ Chrupalla, referring to the policy, told broadcaster ARD.
‘It was the others who erected the firewalls,’ Mr Siegmund told German newspaper Bild before the results began to funnel through. ‘If no one wants to work with us, then we’ll just have to do it alone.’
Mr Siegmund has ambitions to become state premier and lead a political revolution from Saxony-Anhalt that would propel the party to national victory in 2029.
Dubbed ‘Germany’s most dangerous man’ by a news magazine Der Spiegel, Mr Siegmund mocked the publication by handing out signed copies to his fans.
In recent months, the hard-Right leader – a former entrepreneur – has been mobbed by adoring supporters at ‘family picnics’ and campaign events across the small state.
The party has tapped into a sense of nostalgia for communist East Germany as well as lingering resentment about an enduring wealth gap with the west decades after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.
Tapping in to the defiant sense of local ‘Ossie pride’ – Ossie being a colloquial term for people from the former East Germany – Mr Siegmund has been frequently pictured riding a vintage Simson scooter, including to the polling booth Sunday in his hometown of Tangermuende.
But his vow to deport irregular migrants ‘from minute one’ has terrified many foreign-born residents.
Germany’s domestic intelligence agency considers the AfD chapter he represents as ‘Right-wing extremist’ with links to ethno-nationalist groups and think-tanks.
Ulrich Siegmund and his wife arrive at the polling station in Tangermuende on Sunday on an iconic Simson scooter, which he has regularly ridden on the campaign trail
Mr Siegmund was present at a 2023 secret meeting near Berlin where extreme Right-wing activists discussed a radical ‘remigration’ plan to expel millions of people with a migration background.
At the time, the revelation cost Mr Siegmund a committee chairmanship in the state parliament – but he has since dismissed the meeting as a ‘Kaffee Klatsch’ or casual social gathering.
Letting out cries of joy and jumping into the air, AfD supporters celebrated as they realised the scale of their election triumph in the ex-communist eastern state.
As exit polls put the party’s vote share at a thumping 44 percent, jubilant scenes erupted at a post-election party in Magdeburg, capital of the state of Saxony-Anhalt.
AfD state lawmaker Daniel Wald, 44, compared the unbridled happiness to the collective joy he remembers witnessing as a child on the day the Berlin Wall fell.
‘That very feeling – that emotion I experienced back in 1989, with tears in my eyes and all the people around me, my family, cheering – that exact feeling welled up again when we stood up there and saw the result,’ he said.
‘And that is precisely what the people are feeling right now … that this is a new beginning. And, of course, that spirit is meant to spread across the entire country.’
Angela Maike, 65, a retiree from the city, told AFP: ‘I thought the result would be around 41 percent, but it’s higher.
AfD national co-leaders Alice Weidel (left) and Tino Chrupalla (right) congratulate local candidate Ulrich Siegmund (centre)
‘I always prefer to be a bit pessimistic beforehand so I can be pleasantly surprised afterwards. And that’s what happened today,’ she added.
Julian Schneider, a 29-year-old member of the AfD’s youth organisation, said he was not surprised at the result.
‘I’m naturally optimistic, but I think it was predictable,’ he said.
Pointing to the high turnout – 78 per cent, according to public broadcaster ZDF – he welcomed the fact that ‘people who might not have gone to vote in the end mobilised to vote for the AfD’ in the small state of 2.1 million.
Five years ago at the last state election in Saxony-Anhalt, turnout was around 60 percent.
German voters headed to the polls today for a crucial regional election with voting booths closing at 6pm local time.
The small state of Saxony-Anhalt was ruled by the centre-Right CDU of Chancellor Friedrich Merz in coalition with two smaller parties, run by state premier Sven Schulze.
Mr Schulze called the outcome ‘a severe blow’ but – depending on the final count and the fate of smaller parties – may still try to cobble together a multi-party coalition to cling to power.
The German Economic Institute (IW) has warned the AfD’s immigration policy would be ‘ruinous’ for Saxony-Anhalt, which is highly reliant on foreign-born workers, especially in the health sector.
‘The result is even worse than what opinion polls had suggested beforehand,’ wrote Holger Schmieding of Berenberg bank.
‘This will most likely trigger a period of serious and potentially noisy soul-searching within the CDU.
‘A major reason for the AfD success seems to be that the federal government under Merz has become deeply unpopular.’
AfD’s win will shake Germany, a country that has long been at pains to atone for its dark history in the Second World War and the Holocaust and which has so far kept extremist parties in check.
The hard-Right party’s landslide victory in Saxony-Anhalt will also heap pressure on Mr Merz, who has vowed to reboot a stagnant economy and restrict irregular immigration, but has seen his party beaten by the AfD in national surveys too.
‘If the AfD wins in Saxony-Anhalt, Merz’s critics will become even more vocal, and calls for better leadership will become impossible to ignore,’ political scientist Wolfgang Schroeder of Kassel University had previously warned.
However, Mr Schroeder also said he does not expect Mr Merz to be ousted, given the current absence of a strong rival candidate: ‘As far as I can see, there is no alternative chancellor.’
Mr Merz did not face the cameras himself after exit polls revealed the extent of the AfD’s victory, but instead sent his Minister of the Chancellery, Nina Warken. She spoke of a ‘very, very difficult result’ that ‘we will accept, but not tolerate’, Bild reported.
Polls opened at 8am local time and some 1.7 million voters had until 6pm to cast their ballots (Pictured: People casting their votes in the Saxony-Anhalt state election, in Tangermuende, Germany)
Germans attend a rally at the Democracy Festival in Magdeburg on September 5, 2026, in a protest against an expected increase of votes for the hard-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party
Mr Siegmund had vowed to topple a ‘domino’ on Sunday and lead a political revolution from the small state of 2.1 million people that propels the anti-establishment party to national victory in 2029.
The AfD’s key campaign promises include a ‘remigration and deportation offensive’, a ban on LGBTQ pride rainbow flags at public schools, and an end to new wind farms.
The prospect of an AfD state government – while eagerly awaited by many voters – has sparked alarm among mainstream parties and minority groups.
Thousands of the AfD’s opponents joined a ‘festival of democracy’ rally in Magdeburg on the eve of the vote.
The IW warned the AfD’s immigration policy would be ‘ruinous’ for the state, whose population is already ageing, shrinking and highly reliant on foreign-born workers.
Others have voiced fears an AfD-run state security apparatus could leak sensitive information to Russia.
The Kremlin ‘makes no secret of the fact that the AfD is the most important instrument for destabilising Germany for [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’, Thuringia state interior minister Georg Maier told the Handelsblatt daily.
In the final stretch of campaigning, a social media video stoked fears about mail vote fraud, with claims of manipulation at an elderly care home that were denied by state authorities.
Germany’s parliamentary speaker Julia Kloeckner dismissed AfD speculation of voter manipulation, speaking to news weekly Der Spiegel.
‘Questioning elections without concrete evidence appears to have one goal,’ she said, ‘to sow distrust in our rules and to accept the results only if the outcome suits’.
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