AfD Wins German State; CDU Rebels Eye Pact
AfD Wins German State; CDU Rebels Eye Pact
The News
Germany's Alternative for Germany party won Sunday's state election in Saxony-Anhalt with 43.8% of the vote, taking 39 of the seats in the new state parliament — three short of the 43 needed to govern on its own.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats, the incumbent party in the state, collapsed to 17.2%.
Merz said Monday he will stay in office, told his party's federal executive the loss had shaken it "to its core," and vowed to use "all the instruments" of Germany's constitution against what he called a "right-wing extremist state government."
The Numbers
AfD: 43.8% and 39 seats. CDU: 17.2%, down from about 37% at the previous election. The SPD and the Greens finished at roughly nine per cent apiece. Six parties enter the new parliament. A majority takes 43 seats.
Timeline
Saxony premier Michael Kretschmer, a Merz ally, publicly floats the idea of collaborating with the AfD, according to The Gateway Pundit's earlier reporting.
Saxony-Anhalt votes. The AfD finishes first by a wide margin.
Final results put the AfD on 43.8% and 39 seats, and the CDU on 17.2%. Coalition talks begin.
Merz addresses the CDU federal executive in Berlin. German newspaper Bild reports he called the result a "dramatic defeat" that had "shaken our party to its core," and said the AfD intends the "complete destruction" of the CDU.
AfD senior MP Maximilian Krah tells The Telegraph that CDU politicians in Saxony-Anhalt are weighing switching their support to his party.
Reactions
"There are some in the Christian Democrats who, because of this catastrophic result, would prefer to join us instead of the loser parties," Krah told The Telegraph. AfD leader Alice Weidel has also hinted that CDU members in the state are considering backing an AfD-led government. The rebels have not been identified.
Merz, per The Guardian, said his conservative CDU was shaken "to its very foundations" — while insisting he will not leave office.
Almost every other party in the new parliament has already ruled out working with the AfD in any form. Left-wing parties call the AfD fascists to be fought; the CDU's objection, as Breitbart frames it, is that the AfD means to destroy it as a political force.
Saxony-Anhalt's Catholic and Protestant churches issued a joint statement expressing concern at the result, and one of Germany's largest trade unions called on the other parties to freeze the AfD out of power entirely.
The Wall Street Journal reports the result is likely to open a debate inside German politics over the future of the "firewall" that has kept the AfD out of power.
What's Next
Coalition talks are underway, and the arithmetic is brutal. With every mainstream party refusing to deal, the AfD's only paths are a partnership with the small left-populist Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, a minority government, or fresh elections.
The BSW has said it would not vote for an AfD government outright, but floated using state parliamentary procedure to let AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund become minister-president without formally voting for him — or installing a non-partisan figurehead in the top job instead.
Siegmund has said he will only lead a government on the basis of a formal majority coalition, and has signaled he would consider new elections rather than take a weaker deal.
The other open question is whether Merz's government survives the fallout. Whether the defeat brings it down is now being discussed openly in Berlin.
More
If the AfD does get over the 43-seat line, it would be the first time the party controls one of Germany's 16 federal states — a step toward the national power it openly seeks.
The German state already treats the party as a security problem. A previous left-wing federal government moved to have the AfD declared politically unacceptable, a step on the road to an outright ban, and Saxony-Anhalt's domestic intelligence service has classified the state branch as "confirmed right-wing extremist." That leaves the possibility that the next government of Saxony-Anhalt is run by a party the current one has powers to surveil.
Analysis of voting data and exit polling reported by German broadcaster Tagesschau, cited by Breitbart, found the AfD won a plurality in practically every demographic group in the state — including the youngest voters.
Poll
Should Germany's other parties block the AfD from governing Saxony-Anhalt?
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