8 September 2026

How long can Germany resist the far right?

The AfD feeds off the failures of the centre, and that strategy has taken it to the cusp of political power

Photo by Ronny HARTMANN / AFP via Getty Images

It was clear the AfD would win the Saxony-Anhalt election by a large margin months before its 6 September polling day. But when the results were revealed in the early evening, it still came as a shock. With almost 44 per cent of the vote, the far-right party had done even better than expected – its share of the vote was almost the same as all the other parties put together. Meanwhile, the collapse of the centre-right Christian Democrats, which had governed the eastern German state continuously for more than 20 years, was even more dramatic than expected: their share of the vote dropped from 37 per cent in the last election five years ago to just 17 per cent, though they remain the second largest party.

However, because all of the other parties had ruled out the possibility of joining a coalition with the AfD, the big question was whether it would get the absolute majority inside the Landtag – the regional parliament – it needed to form a local government all by itself. In the end the party fell three seats short. Nonetheless, it is likely that Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD’s 35-year-old candidate, will become the next minister-president of Saxony-Anhalt – either through the tacit support of the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance), a small “conservative left-wing” party, or possibly through the defection of a few Christian Democrat members of the Landtag. It would mark the first time in the history of the postwar Federal Republic that a far-right party has taken power at the state level.

The uncomfortable truth is that it would be absurd if, after this result, the next state government was not led by the AfD. The party received a higher percentage of the vote than any other party currently in power in any other state; Siegmund can claim to have a stronger democratic mandate than any other minister-president in Germany. Turnout was also very high, at 78 per cent. Moreover, the biggest source for AfD’s increased vote share is non-voters. In other words, for all the ways in which the AfD – a party that has been classified as “right-wing extremist” by German intelligence services – could be a threat to democracy, there is also something democratic about its rise.

Eight years ago, when it was nowhere near as popular as it is today, the Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz vowed that, if he were to become the leader of Germany, he would cut the far-right party’s vote share in half. Instead, since he became chancellor in May 2025, the AfD has surged to become the most popular party in the country. As many have pointed out since the election, in Saxony-Anhalt it was the Christian Democrats’ share of the vote that was halved. Merz’s strategy of moving his party to the right, especially by copying the AfD’s rhetoric and aggressive policies on immigration, has spectacularly failed – despite his government reducing the number of migrants coming into Germany, support for the AfD has surged.

The election result has been interpreted as proof that the centrist parties’ strategy of refusing to cooperate with the AfD – the so-called Brandmauer, or “firewall” – has also failed. But this is not quite right. It is true that, since Merz became leader of the Christian Democrats in 2022, they have continued to rule out coalitions with the AfD. But in January 2025 – a few months before he became chancellor – Merz controversially worked with the AfD to push an immigration bill through the Bundestag. Though it was ultimately unsuccessful, that unprecedented move was considered to have weakened the Brandmauer. Nevertheless, those within the Christian Democrats who think that the firewall should be abandoned altogether will become more influential after the Saxony-Anhalt election, and push for greater cooperation with the AfD.

The reality is that the Brandmauer was never a remedy for the rise of the far right. It kept the AfD out of power in the short term but strengthened it in the medium, by implicitly telling voters that the other parties were acting as a kind of cartel. It was only a means of buying time to allow centrist parties to solve Germany’s problems. Yet they had little to offer. The Christian Democrats focused on the “cultural” reasons for the rise of the AfD, such as immigration, and ignored the underlying economic factors. They hoped that emulating the far-right party’s rhetoric and policies on immigration – what political scientists call a strategy of accommodation – would reduce support for the far-right party.

The AfD is also expected to make gains in two more upcoming regional elections, in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which take place on 20 September. After that, there is much speculation that Merz could be replaced as chancellor. But whoever leads the ruling party, the Christian Democrats are unlikely to do the one thing that might actually begin to solve some of Germany’s real problems – that is, to abandon the constitutional debt brake and increase investment. Instead, they will probably move still further to the right on immigration and double down on the strategy it has followed so far, even though it has become abundantly clear that the plan has failed.