The far-right party Alternative for Germany, or AfD, is set to make a major breakthrough.
Saxony-Anhalt, a former East German state of around two million people, is relatively small.
But the significance of the election there on Sunday could be seismic.
The AfD is on track to win overwhelmingly
and perhaps even secure an overall majority,
which would mean that it could form a state government for the first time in its history.
Long confined to the opposition,
the AfD now stands on the cusp of wielding power
— regionally, at least.
The rise of the AfD has already made coherent and stable government difficult at the national level.
Its success in last year’s federal election,
in which it came in second, with 20 percent of the vote,
forced the center-right Christian Democrats to form a government with the center-left Social Democrats.
The two parties have squabbled since Friedrich Merz became chancellor,
and the AfD has surged in the polls.
Now it is by far the most popular party in Germany.
What makes the AfD’s rise especially shocking is that it is much more extreme than other European far-right parties
-- that either are already in power, like Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy,
or could be soon, like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally.
Whereas those parties have sought in some ways to detoxify and moderate themselves,
the AfD has become more radical over time,
deepening its ties to neo-Nazis
and promising to repatriate migrants.
As it has done so, it has grown more popular.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/04/opinion/afd-germany-saxony-anhalt.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
