AfD poised to break German firewall with Saxony-Anhalt victory

On September 6, voters in Saxony-Anhalt will decide whether the Alternative for Germany becomes the first far-right party to lead a German state government since the Federal Republic's founding. Polls suggest Ulrich Siegmund's AfD could secure an outright majority in the Magdeburg parliament, making him minister-president and shattering the informal firewall that has kept the party out of executive office at every level since 2013.

A premiere the chancellor did not want

The consequences would be immediate and awkward. Under Germany's rotating system, the new premier would assume the chair of the Conference of Minister-Presidents for a year, entitling him to regular summits in Berlin and joint press conferences with Chancellor Friedrich Merz. Merz has described the AfD as a party that "questions the fundamental decisions made by the Federal Republic of Germany since 1949." His CDU, together with its Bavarian sister party the CSU, once dominated the political right. Now they watch the AfD erode that space, and senior figures in both parties declined to speak on the record about contingency plans.

Intelligence sharing becomes the flashpoint

The most concrete preparations centre on domestic security. Georg Maier, Thuringia's SPD interior minister, told colleagues that an AfD-led interior ministry in Magdeburg would give the party access to highly classified material, and that the party maintains "good channels" to Moscow. "If the AfD provides the minister-president in Saxony-Anhalt, the champagne corks will be popping in the Kremlin," he said. Maier has obtained legal advice that "preventive segmentation" of intelligence databases is permissible: building what he called "Chinese walls" to block AfD access to files on right-wing extremism and espionage while preserving cooperation on counter-terrorism and public safety.

The model mirrors the long-standing practice of "A-state" and "B-state" coordination, where SPD-led and CDU-led governments caucus separately before major conferences. Applied to the AfD, it would place the ostracised government on one side and the other fifteen states on the other. Christoph Degenhart, a former judge on Saxony's Constitutional Court, said the approach is "definitely conceivable" but questioned how long courts would tolerate it.

The AfD's Saxony-Anhalt spokesperson, Patrick Harr, dismissed the allegations. "That's complete nonsense," he said. "We don't have a red telephone to Moscow. We talk to everyone, whether West or East. That doesn't mean we're going to hand over files." But Konstantin von Notz, the Green deputy chair of the Bundestag's intelligence oversight panel, pointed to Austria's experience. After the Freedom Party took the interior ministry in 2017, police raided the domestic intelligence service and seized sensitive data, including material from allied agencies. Western partners then restricted intelligence sharing, and Austria temporarily withdrew from working groups of the Bern Club, the informal network of Western security services. "The British, the Americans, the Poles, the Ukrainians, nobody would share information with us anymore for fear that everything would be passed on to Moscow," von Notz warned.

Fiscal leverage meets constitutional constraints

A second lever is money. Saxony-Anhalt has relied on Germany's fiscal equalisation system for decades. Preliminary figures for 2025 show the state received €2.8 billion, nearly one fifth of its budget. Reducing or halting those transfers could pressure an AfD government, and the party's own strategists treat this as a real risk. But the legal barriers are formidable. Danyal Bayaz, the Green finance minister of Baden-Württemberg, a net contributor state, chose his words carefully. "The fiscal equalisation system is anchored in the constitution and is not an instrument that can simply be changed according to the political weather," he said. He added a caveat: a federal system based on solidarity depends on shared commitment to the rule of law. If a state government calls those principles into question, "that would affect trust and cooperation with the federal government and other states, including in financial matters." His office stressed this was a personal assessment, not an agreed government position.

The nuclear option that nobody names

The most powerful instrument remains unused. Article 37 of the Basic Law allows the federal government, with Bundesrat consent, to take "necessary measures" to compel a state to fulfil its legal obligations, up to appointing a federal commissioner with authority to issue binding instructions to state authorities. Known as Bundeszwang, it has never been invoked. In interviews for this story, no official raised it unprompted, whether from conviction or fear of handing the AfD a martyrdom narrative before the vote. Within the party's intellectual circles, however, it is treated as inevitable. Götz Kubitschek, a publisher based in Saxony-Anhalt whom the New York Times once called "the prophet of Germany's new right," said in 2025 that federal coercion is exactly what he would expect.

A trigger is speculative. One scenario: an AfD government fails to provide basic services for asylum seekers, prompting Berlin to intervene with binding orders. But the political cost would be enormous. Measures designed to defend liberal democracy could equally feed the AfD's core grievance, that the establishment refuses to accept electoral outcomes it dislikes.

Public opinion is shifting

That grievance is finding resonance. A representative poll in July found only 42 percent of Germans still considered it right for the SPD and CDU to refuse cooperation with the AfD. Another survey showed support for the exclusion strategy had fallen to 46 percent, down from 54 percent in early 2025. The firewall, in other words, is losing popular legitimacy even before it is breached.

Governing may constrain the party more than containment

Paradoxically, the most effective check on the AfD may be the act of governing itself. The party has thrived in opposition, converting every government misstep into political fuel. It has never administered a budget, managed a bureaucracy, or negotiated with municipal associations. Kubitschek advised that Siegmund's team must "prepare like the biggest overachievers." Benedikt Kaiser, an influential far-right intellectual and aide to an AfD Bundestag member, urged caution: "In the first 90 days of government, the AfD has to pursue a politics that does not create fear," he said, citing "family benefits, free school meals, things like that" as safe starting points.

Internal divisions could also surface. The AfD's Saxony-Anhalt branch is regarded as one of the party's most radical wings. An outright majority would not guarantee discipline; it could amplify factional struggles between those who want to prove governing competence and those who see office as a platform for confrontation.