AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund enters Sunday's Saxony-Anhalt election polling above 40 percent, 15-20 points ahead of Chancellor Merz's CDU, a result that could deliver Germany's first far-right state government since World War II and deepen the crisis facing Merz's coalition.
Ulrich Siegmund, the 35-year-old former salesman carrying the far-right Alternative for Germany's bid for power, enters Sunday's Saxony-Anhalt vote with his party polling above 40 percent — 15 to 20 points clear of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats — a result that would hand the AfD its first state government since the party's founding in 2013 and break Germany's post-war political consensus.
"The consensus-driven model we have been used to within Germany over the last decades is now threatened," said Janos Richter, an analyst with Verfassungsblog, a Berlin public-law forum.
Siegmund, who rejects the far-right label and campaigns on the slogan "I want my beautiful, old, safe Germany back," has drawn packed rallies across the eastern state of 2.3 million people with a folksy pitch that steers clear of the rhetoric of party colleagues such as Thuringia's Bjoern Hoecke, twice convicted for using Nazi slogans. Polls put the AfD at 40 to 43 percent against 22 to 24 percent for the CDU, which governs in coalition with the Social Democrats and Free Democrats. The party's 256-page program for the state calls for curbing immigration, ending the right to asylum, restoring ties with Moscow and scaling back teaching about the Nazi era in favor of a "patriotic cultural policy."
The stakes extend well beyond one eastern state. Saxony-Anhalt, which votes Sept. 6, is the first of three eastern elections this month — Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern follow Sept. 20 — that the AfD sees as a stepping stone to the 2029 national ballot. State governments hold wide powers over education, police and domestic security, and they make up the Bundesrat, Germany's upper house of parliament. An AfD interior minister would gain access to Oplan Germany, the secret NATO deployment plan, a prospect the SPD interior minister of Thuringia called a "flagrant security risk for the Federal Republic."
The surge is fueled less by Saxony-Anhalt's own economy than by disillusion with Berlin. Unemployment in the state runs near 8 percent, though economists note the region has added logistics and renewable-energy industries in recent years. "Taking a broad view over the past 10 to 15 years, economic development in Saxony-Anhalt has been more than satisfactory," said Thomas Brockmeier, head of the Halle-Dessau Chamber of Industry and Commerce.
The real driver is Merz, whose approval has collapsed to the lowest of any chancellor in recent memory — one survey put dissatisfaction at about 85 percent — as Europe's largest economy has barely grown since 2019 and industry shrinks. A national poll showed the AfD the most popular party at 28 percent, ahead of the CDU/CSU's 21 percent and the SPD's 12 percent. Even within Merz's own party, more than half of those surveyed disapproved of his leadership. The CDU's credibility has eroded sharply from the 20.8 percent the AfD won in Saxony-Anhalt in 2021.
Most centrist parties have vowed to uphold the "firewall" against the AfD, which Germany's domestic intelligence agency classified as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization in May 2025 before a court provisionally blocked the designation in February 2026. But if smaller parties fail to clear the 5 percent threshold, the AfD could win an outright majority of seats — installing Siegmund as the first far-right state premier since World War II without needing a coalition partner.
The election lands as Germany confronts an escalating Russian hybrid campaign. Berlin announced Sept. 1 that Moscow was behind an attempted drone attack on Leipzig/Halle Airport, part of a pattern of sabotage and disinformation that has tested the government's response. The AfD's platform of restoring ties with Russia and ending sanctions has made it a particular concern for security officials, who warn that an AfD-run interior ministry could leak classified information to extremist groups.
Siegmund, a former CDU member who built a room-fragrance company before entering politics, has promised to recruit sympathetic officials from other states to push through changes to schools, law enforcement and asylum centers — pointing to probable clashes with the federal government. Der Spiegel's cover branding him "Germany's most dangerous man" he treated as "good advertising," posting footage of himself signing copies on Instagram.
If the AfD wins, centrist parties face the delicate task of containing a hostile state government without handing it a pretext to claim Berlin is sabotaging it. "Finding ways to deal with an AfD government and address the security risks it poses will be a huge challenge for the other states and for the federal government," said Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute. A strong showing would complicate Merz's ability to govern and respond to crises abroad, even as a leadership challenge remains unlikely in the coming months. The last time a far-right party approached state power in Germany, in Thuringia in 2019, centrist parties formed a fragile minority government that collapsed within months — a precedent that now looms over Saxony-Anhalt.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
