AfD polls at 41% in Saxony-Anhalt, eyeing first state premiership

A 35-year-old business psychology graduate stands on the verge of something no Alternative for Germany politician has achieved: leading a German state government. Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD's lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, has spent years honing a presentational style that contrasts sharply with the party's reputation for abrasive nationalism. With the party polling at roughly 41% ahead of the September 6 election, the question is no longer whether the AfD can win the most votes in an eastern German state, but whether anyone will govern with it.

The psychology of a different kind of AfD candidate

Siegmund's academic background has shaped his political approach. He studied business psychology roughly a decade ago, a discipline that examines how people make decisions, respond to messaging and form preferences in commercial and organisational contexts. That training appears to have informed a campaign style that emphasises approachability over provocation. He is described by those who have followed his rise as the sunny, smiling face of a party more commonly associated with anger and grievance.

The distinction matters. The AfD has built its electoral base on opposition to immigration, scepticism towards European integration and cultural conservatism, positions often articulated in deliberately confrontational terms. Siegmund's gift has been to deliver essentially the same programme wrapped in a more palatable package. He smiles. He listens. He avoids the inflammatory rhetoric that has landed other AfD figures under observation by Germany's domestic intelligence services. The substance, however, remains unchanged.

Why 41% changes and does not change the calculation

Polling at 41% in a state of roughly 2.2 million people, drawn from Destatis population figures, places the AfD well ahead of its rivals in Saxony-Anhalt. The party has been the strongest political force in eastern German state polling for several years, but translating poll numbers into actual governing power has remained elusive because of the firewall strategy adopted by every other party represented in state parliaments: no coalition, no confidence-and-supply agreement, no informal cooperation with the AfD under any circumstances.

The firewall has held in every state parliament so far. In Thuringia, after the AfD became the largest party in the 2024 state election with 32.8% of the vote, the other parties cobbled together a minority government led by the CDU's Mario Voigt, relying on votes from the Left party and the Social Democrats to pass legislation. In Saxony, the AfD also finished first but was again excluded from government. The pattern has repeated across the east: the AfD wins the most votes, then watches from opposition while rivals govern around it.

Saxony-Anhalt's election introduces a new variable. At 41%, the AfD is not merely the largest party; it is approaching the kind of vote share that makes arithmetic without it extremely difficult. The state parliament has 97 seats under its electoral system. A governing majority requires 49. If the AfD holds 40 or more of those seats, the remaining parties would need to assemble nearly every other vote in the chamber to form a stable coalition, and even then, the ideological span required might be unbridgeable.

The firewall under strain

Germany's political establishment has treated the AfD as a pariah since the party's early days, when it was still primarily a vehicle for eurosceptic academics rather than the nationalist force it has since become. The rationale for the firewall is straightforward: the AfD's positions on immigration, citizenship and national identity are considered incompatible with the democratic order, and several of its state associations have been classified as right-wing extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution.

Saxony-Anhalt's AfD association is among those classified as a suspected case of right-wing extremism, a designation that permits intelligence surveillance of the party's internal communications and activities. The classification has not dented the party's electoral appeal. If anything, it has reinforced the narrative, popular with AfD voters, that the political establishment uses state power to suppress genuine popular sentiment.

The firewall has always depended on the willingness of other parties to bear the costs of exclusion: unstable minority governments, awkward legislative bargains, the constant risk of early elections. Those costs rise with every percentage point the AfD gains. At some point, the question of whether to maintain the blockade becomes less a matter of democratic principle and more a test of whether the remaining parties can actually make the numbers work.

What a Siegmund premiership would mean

If Siegmund were to become minister-president of Saxony-Anhalt, the consequences would extend well beyond the state's borders. Germany's upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, is composed of delegates from the 16 state governments, and each state's delegation votes as a block instructed by the governing coalition. An AfD-led government would give the party a direct voice in federal legislation, including on matters that require Bundesrat approval such as certain tax changes, EU treaty amendments and constitutional reforms.

The practical impact would depend on the size of the AfD's governing majority. A single state's Bundesrat votes are weighted by population: Saxony-Anhalt currently holds four votes out of 69. That is not enough to block legislation alone, but it would give the AfD a platform and a procedural foothold in federal decision-making that it has never possessed. The party would also gain control of the state's administrative apparatus, including its police force, education ministry and cultural institutions.

Symbolically, the effect would be larger still. The AfD has spent more than a decade as an opposition force, first in the European Parliament, then in state parliaments and, since 2017, in the Bundestag. It has never held executive power at any level in Germany. A state premiership would demonstrate that the firewall is not impenetrable and that the AfD can translate votes into governance, a message that would resonate powerfully with the party's supporters and alarm its opponents in equal measure.

The eastern German context

Saxony-Anhalt is one of five states that made up the former East Germany, and its politics reflect the persistent east-west divide that has shaped German elections since reunification. The AfD's vote share in the east has consistently run 10 to 15 percentage points above its national average, a gap that reflects not only economic disparities but also deeper cultural and political differences. Trust in federal institutions is lower in the east. Attachment to the European Union is weaker. The experience of four decades of authoritarian government left a different relationship with political representation, one that the AfD has skilfully exploited.

The state is among Germany's poorer regions. Its GDP per capita lags the national average, and its population has declined since reunification as younger residents move west for better-paid work. The AfD's message, that the political establishment in Berlin and Brussels has failed the east, finds a receptive audience in towns and villages where the promised dividends of unity have been slow to arrive. Siegmund's presentation, friendly and local rather than aggressive and national, fits this landscape.

The arithmetic problem for everyone else

The current state government in Saxony-Anhalt is a coalition of the CDU, the Social Democrats and the Free Democrats, led by the CDU's Reiner Haseloff. It has governed since 2021, but the three-party arrangement was always a marriage of convenience rather than conviction. The Free Democrats barely cleared the 5% threshold needed to enter parliament. Should the FDP fall below that threshold on September 6, as national polling suggests is possible, the coalition options narrow further.

A CDU-SPD coalition might be arithmetically possible if the AfD takes 41% and the remaining parties divide the rest evenly enough, but it would require both the CDU and SPD to improve on their current polling. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, a left-nationalist party that has attracted voters from both the AfD and the Left, could also enter the state parliament and complicate the math further. Every scenario that excludes the AfD requires at least three and possibly four parties to agree on a programme, a proposition that grows more difficult as the political centre shrinks.