AfD Bids for First Far-Right State Power in Tomorrow's German Vote
Saxony-Anhalt votes tomorrow with the AfD aiming for an outright majority — which would hand the far right state-level power for the first time in Germany’s post-war history, bypassing the “firewall” entirely since no party will govern with it. Lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund’s manifesto includes segregating refugee children into separate classes and a deportation task force; he has not ruled out abolishing the state’s domestic intelligence branch, which classes his party as right-wing extremist.
The firewall was built for coalition arithmetic, and an outright majority is the one result it cannot contain — which is why tomorrow’s vote in a state of two million carries national weight: an AfD government would control police, schools and the very intelligence branch that surveils it, a live experiment in what the party does with actual power. The context Berlin cannot ignore is hybrid: this is the week Germany formally blamed Moscow for the Leipzig airport plot, and security services warn Russian-backed disinformation is flooding exactly these electorates. A strong result also tightens the vice on Chancellor Merz, already dogged by doubts he can see out his term, with the AfD leading national polls. Watch turnout and the margin — between “largest party” and “majority” lies the difference between crisis and constitutional rupture.