AfD targets Saxony-Anhalt win as polls top 40% before vote

AfD enters Saxony-Anhalt’s election polling above 40%, putting Germany’s conservatives under pressure in an eastern state vote. Sunday’s ballot could give the party its first route to state power, even if rival parties maintain a cordon against cooperation.

The vote matters beyond Magdeburg because state governments shape Germany’s upper house, the Bundesrat, and hold powers over schools, culture and domestic security. A strong AfD result would test how long other parties can keep the party from executive office while it expands its vote share.

Polls put AfD ahead

Opinion polls place the AfD more than 15 to 20 percentage points ahead of Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats, who currently govern Saxony-Anhalt with the Social Democrats and Free Democrats. The AfD is campaigning on tighter immigration rules, renewed ties with Russia and leaving the euro.

State Premier Sven Schulze, the CDU incumbent, has described the election as "a decision that will set the course for Germany." Most other parties have ruled out cooperation with the AfD, which the state domestic intelligence office has designated extremist right-wing.

That refusal could leave the CDU leading another coalition even if the AfD finishes first. The arithmetic would give Schulze’s party a path to power while also exposing a wider shift in German politics since the AfD’s formation in 2013.

Siegmund builds eastern campaign

Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s 35-year-old lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, has spent months campaigning in village halls and town squares across the state. He tells supporters, "I want my beautiful, old, safe Germany back."

Siegmund rejects the far-right label and says he speaks "the language of the people." His campaign has focused on asylum seekers, immigration, schools, gender policy and the costs German industry faced after losing cheap Russian oil and gas following Berlin’s support for Ukraine.

The AfD began in western Germany during the euro zone debt crisis but has built its strongest base in the formerly communist east. Surveys cited in the campaign point to a persistent sense among many eastern voters that reunification in 1990 did not deliver equal outcomes.

Industry needs labor, not rupture

Saxony-Anhalt’s economy gives the campaign an additional edge. The state has a declining population, and economists say sectors including health care, tourism and chemicals will need immigration to ease worker shortages.

Thomas Brockmeier, head of the Halle-Dessau Chamber of Industry and Commerce, said the state’s long-term record was stronger than the political debate suggests. "Taking a broad view over the past 10 to 15 years, economic development in Saxony-Anhalt has been more than satisfactory. I would even say it has been quite good," he said.

The state has also added newer industrial activity, including logistics and renewable energy, alongside its chemicals base. For companies planning investment, the immediate issue is whether political conflict changes labor supply, permitting or education policy.

Berlin faces Bundesrat strain

The AfD sees Saxony-Anhalt as part of a longer sequence: two more state elections follow this month in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin, before national elections scheduled for 2029. The party also won around 20% in Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate earlier this year, a western showing that points to broader reach than its eastern strongholds.

A state-level breakthrough would complicate daily governing for Merz in Berlin. State governments influence federal legislation through the Bundesrat, and interior ministries handle sensitive areas including policing, intelligence cooperation and domestic security.

Thuringia’s SPD interior minister warned this week that an AfD state interior minister would be a "flagrant security risk for the Federal Republic." Janos Richter, an analyst with the public law forum Verfassungsblog, said, "The consensus-driven model we have been used to within Germany over the last decades is now threatened."

Coalition math sets scenarios

If the AfD finishes first but remains outside government, the global signal would be political rather than economic: Europe’s largest economy would show a deeper anti-establishment vote without an immediate policy turn. For the AfD, a blocked win could become evidence for its 2029 national campaign; for industry, continuity in state administration would limit near-term disruption.

If the firewall breaks or the AfD gains control of key ministries, the mechanism would run through schools, law enforcement and asylum centers. Siegmund has said he would recruit politically sympathetic officials from other states, a plan that points to clashes with Berlin and other regional governments.

If the CDU and its partners hold the line but lose ground, Merz still faces a harder federal landscape. The open questions are whether voters treat Saxony-Anhalt as a local protest, whether the AfD can turn polling into governing leverage, and whether businesses can secure labor while migration remains the campaign’s central dividing line.