AfD poised for historic state victory as German firewall strategy crumbles

On 6 September, voters in Saxony-Anhalt will go to the polls in what may become the most consequential state election in Germany since reunification. The Alternative für Deutschland, whose local branch the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution classifies as confirmed rightwing extremist, is polling at 42 percent. Under Germany's five percent threshold, that could deliver an absolute majority in the Magdeburg parliament, the first time a far-right party has governed a German state alone since the Second World War.

How the firewall became a greenhouse

For decades, German parties maintained a Brandmauer, a firewall, refusing any cooperation with the far right. In 2018, the CDU under Merz codified this into a formal incompatibility resolution. The logic was straightforward: isolate the AfD, deny it legitimacy, and voters would reject it. The opposite has happened. Since that resolution, AfD support has nearly doubled nationally. The party has led federal polls since April 2025. In the east, it dominates.

Three structural flaws explain the failure. First, as The Economist has argued, exclusion insulates the AfD from the compromises of governance. Most European far-right parties, Italy's Brothers of Italy, the Netherlands' PVV, Austria's FPÖ, have been forced to moderate in office. The AfD has not. It promises whatever its voters want, untested by administrative reality.

Second, the firewall has hollowed out the centre. Alexander Görlach, a German academic who has written extensively on populism, observed that the firewall has "hollowed-out" the centre: to build majorities excluding the far right, the CDU has had to enter "Grand Coalitions" with its historic adversary, the centre-left SPD. The result is a blurred distinction between the two main parties, reinforcing the AfD's narrative of a cartel stitch-up.

Third, the arithmetic of exclusion produces unstable coalitions. In Saxony-Anhalt, keeping the AfD out may require the CDU to ally with the SPD, Greens and Die Linke, a four-party coalition spanning the ideological spectrum. Such arrangements are fragile, policy-paralysed, and visibly desperate. Voters notice.

What an AfD state government could actually do

Germany's federal structure gives states real power. The Centre for Strategic and International Studies notes that the 16 Länder control education, policing, public broadcasting and regional civil administration. An AfD government in Magdeburg would not be symbolic. Its published plans include rewriting school history curricula to emphasise German "achievements" over wartime crimes, removing pride flags from public buildings, defunding anti-racism initiatives, and rewriting public broadcaster mandates.

More insidiously, control over public recruitment allows ideological filtering. Civil servants, teachers, police officers, all hired at state level, could face pressure to conform or stay silent. The chilling effect on institutional independence would begin long before any legal challenge reached a court.

Federal and European reverberations

An AfD-led Saxony-Anhalt would send representatives to the Bundesrat, the upper house where states veto or amend federal laws. The party could not block legislation alone, but it could table initiatives, force debates, and fracture the consensus that has made the Bundesrat a quiet engine of compromise. In Brussels, Germany's voice would carry less weight. The AfD sits in the Europe of Sovereign Nations group alongside France's Reconquête and Italy's National Future. A stronger AfD in Berlin weakens the Franco-German motor on climate policy, the party rejects climate action, and on Ukraine, where it opposes military aid and favours normalising relations with Moscow.

The signal to nativist parties across the continent would be potent. France, Italy, Spain and Poland all face national elections within 18 months. A breakthrough in Germany's east would embolden them.

Merz's dilemma and the CDU's shrinking room

Merz's personal ratings have collapsed to around 13 percent, among the lowest for any postwar chancellor. In 2018, he pledged to halve the AfD. Instead, it has grown. His response has been to shift right on migration, adopting AfD language in the hope of reclaiming voters. That strategy has a European track record of failure: it validates the far right's agenda without winning back its supporters.

After 6 September, the CDU faces a choice. Honour the firewall and build a rainbow coalition with Die Linke, a party the CDU has spent decades defining as beyond the pale, or watch the AfD govern. Some senior CDU figures have already said they would rather quit than vote for a Linke-supported administration. That fracture could topple Merz.

The eastern exception that became the rule

Saxony-Anhalt is not an outlier. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania votes on 20 September, Berlin on the same day. The AfD leads in the former, runs second in the latter. What began as an eastern protest vote, against deindustrialisation, demographic decline, and the feeling of being second-class citizens in reunified Germany, has become a national force. The CDU's firewall was designed for a different party system. It assumed a fringe that could be contained. It now faces a competitor that is the leading party in multiple states.

No easy exit from the trap

The firewall's defenders argue it was never meant to be a vote-winner but a moral boundary. That may be true. But a boundary that fails to contain, while forcing the mainstream into contortions that alienate voters, becomes a trap. The AfD has not been beaten at the ballot box. It has been gifted a monopoly on opposition. Until the CDU, SPD and Greens offer a distinct, competent alternative that addresses the economic and cultural grievances driving AfD support, particularly in the east, the firewall will keep burning the very centre it was built to protect.