A Fracturing Centre: Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD and Germany’s Political Consensus

Last month, a crack began to form in Germany’s political centre. For the first time in Germany’s recent democratic history, the Alternative for Germany (AfD)—whose regional entity is legally classified as far-right extremist—won the Saxony-Anhalt state election on 6 September.

The AfD failed to secure an absolute majority, obtaining 43.8% of the vote and 39 seats in the 83-seat chamber (Landtag), three seats short of the 42 needed to govern without a coalition partner. The result nevertheless creates a significant challenge for the formation and stability of the next state government.

Since my article for the Yale Review of International Studies on the anti-democratic roots of the AfD, the international and domestic context surrounding German politics has shifted considerably. Russia’s war against Ukraine has entered its fifth year, while conflicts in the Middle East, political developments in Latin America and growing geopolitical competition with China have further complicated Europe’s security and economic environment.

Against this backdrop, the AfD has achieved record-breaking results beyond its traditional eastern German stronghold, including in Rhineland-Palatinate (19.5%) and Baden-Württemberg (18.8%).

Regional Implications

The division of competences between the Federation (Bunde) and federal states (Länder) in Germany is defined primarily by Articles 70–74 of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz), the country’s constitutional document.

Under Article 70, federal states retain legislative powers unless the Basic Law assigns responsibility to the Federation. In areas of concurrent legislation, Article 72 establishes that the Länder may legislate only so long as and to the extent that the Federation has not exercised its legislative power. At the same time, Germany’s federal structure means that Länder governments retain considerable influence over federal policymaking through the Bundesrat, where state governments participate directly in the federal legislative process.

These constitutional constraints mean that not all campaign promises made at the state level can be translated into regional legislation. While education remains principally in the hands of the state governments, other contested areas of the AfD’s election programme intersect with federal competences or require cooperation between levels of government.

The AfD’s election programme nevertheless carries significant implications at the regional level, particularly for education and migration policy. Examples include proposals to separate children with a migration background into different classes and to expand Russian language instruction in schools. The practical scope of these proposals will therefore depend not only on the AfD’s control of the Landtag, but also on the constitutional division of powers and its ability to secure support across Germany’s federal system.

Domestic Implications

Some observers are quick to dismiss the significance of these regional elections. Saxony-Anhalt has the lowest Human Development Index (HDI) score and lowest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in all of Germany. While some consider the state to be of marginal importance, this perception risks obscuring its broader political significance.

The capital, Magdeburg, has considerable historical value—it is the burial place of Otto I, traditionally regarded as the first Holy Roman Emperor—and served as an important centre of the Reformation. The state continues to play a key role in European logistics networks while developing a new high-tech industrial park following US chipmaker Intel’s abrupt withdrawal from the site.

As in most countries, regional elections in Germany often serve as a litmus test for public approval of the federal government. While previous regional elections in eastern Germany showed broader discontent with the “traffic light coalition”, Saxony-Anhalt’s election—the first in eastern Germany since Friedrich Merz became Chancellor—may indicate a growing discontent with Germany’s two heavyweight parties.

Furthermore, the elections in Saxony-Anhalt indicate a more concerning trend: record-breaking polarisation among German society. While the anti-democratic positions and activities of the AfD are well documented, concerns about political radicalisation are not confined exclusively to the right. The split of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) from Die Linke over immigration policy illustrates that a divergence from the democratic centre also exists on the political left.

Die Linke is itself grappling with growing internal tensions amid the escalation of conflicts in the Middle East following the 7 October attacks. Recent incidents in Berlin-Neukölln, including reports of representatives of the party’s youth organisation (Linksjugend Neukölln) distributing stickers of militant imagery at a school, have further fueled allegations of political radicalisation and antisemitism.

While far-left and far-right movements remain ideologically distinct, the recent BSW-led demonstrations against the closure of the Russian House in Berlin demonstrate how otherwise opposing political movements can converge around particular geopolitical causes. Such demonstrations provide an unusual setting in which seemingly contradictory flags and symbols—ranging from Tsarist Russia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, to the German Democratic Republic—can coexist.

This does not make these movements interchangeable. Their ideological origins, political objectives and relationships with Germany’s constitutional order remain fundamentally different. Rather, their convergence around specific geopolitical issues demonstrates how shared grievances can increasingly cut across traditional partisan divides.

Beyond the electoral gains of the AfD, the elections in Saxony-Anhalt therefore demonstrate a broader challenge facing Germany’s post-war political order: the democratic centre is being squeezed by increasingly fragmented and polarised forces on both sides of the political spectrum.

International Implications

Among the first to congratulate the AfD were the usual candidates: US President Donald Trump, tech giant Elon Musk and Viktor Orbán, prominent figures associated with the transnational populist right. Notably absent, however, were other figures within this same network, including European figures Giorgia Meloni, Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen and several representatives of the Latin American Right.

Argentine President Javier Milei and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele also held silence on the matter. While the emergence of Roberto Vannacci’s party may offer one explanation for Meloni’s silence, the greater silence of other prominent figures, particularly in Latin America, may be signs of an ideological split in the European and global far right.

Similar divisions have emerged within Europe’s “democratic centre” since 2024. Disagreements have surfaced over Venezuela, responses to Israeli settler attacks, and the subsequent reversal of settler import restrictions adopted by Janez Janša’s government in Slovenia. While the far right may be increasingly split along ideological and national lines, similar divisions have emerged among Europe’s established political centrists.

Taken together, these developments raise questions about the cohesion of both the transnational far right and Europe’s democratic centre.

Disagreements over migration, Venezuela and Middle East policy reveal competing political priorities and principles among mainstream political actors, with figures such as Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, former Spanish PM José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Slovenian PM Janez Janša illustrating the fragmentation within the European democratic centre.

The resulting tensions invite broader questions about the coherence and political resilience of Europe’s democratic centre amid increasingly divergent positions on issues with wider implications for European democratic unity.

Conclusion

The result in Saxony-Anhalt should neither be dismissed as a regional anomaly, nor treated as evidence that Germany has crossed an irreversible democratic threshold. The AfD’s electoral breakthrough may not translate into a governing majority, but its success demonstrates how far the German political landscape has shifted. Perhaps more importantly, the election reveals the eroding condition of Germany’s political centre: established parties are struggling to contain rising political dissatisfaction, increasingly channelled towards populist alternatives on both the right and left.

Yet this does not mean that these political extremes are interchangeable. The AfD’s ideological trajectory and its contested relationship with Germany’s constitutional order remain distinct from those of parties on the radical left. Criticism of radicalism on the left should not become a rhetorical device for relativising the far right; conversely, concern about the AfD should not prevent scrutiny of anti-pluralist or authoritarian tendencies elsewhere on the political spectrum. Democratic resilience depends on maintaining both distinctions simultaneously.

The central challenge for Germany extends beyond preventing the AfD from governing. It lies in restoring the capacity of parties at the democratic centre to govern effectively and address voters’ concerns. A political firewall can prevent cooperation with an extremist party, but it cannot, in itself, address the economic insecurity, concerns over migration, institutional distrust and geopolitical anxieties that generate demand for political alternatives. The continued electoral strength of parties at the extremes suggests that these underlying grievances cannot be addressed through exclusion alone.

Saxony-Anhalt should therefore be understood as a warning rather than a verdict. The German post-war democratic order has not collapsed, but it is becoming increasingly fragmented. The challenge for the democratic centre is not to move indefinitely towards either extreme to recapture voters, but to demonstrate that liberal democracy can deliver security, prosperity and political representation without abandoning pluralism.

If established parties fail to do so, the most consequential legacy of the Saxony-Anhalt election may not be the number of seats won by the AfD, but the growing normalisation of political extremism as the only viable response to today's problems.