THE NEW YORK TIMES: German far-right surges, in threat to postwar taboo on extremists in power

MAGDEBURG, Germany — In 77 years of postwar German democracy, no far-right political party has ever won a state election. That streak could end Sunday in the small eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the Alternative for Germany party is riding a wave of voter anger at immigration, economic stagnation and the centrist parties that have long governed the nation.

The party, known as AfD, has been designated a “suspected” extremist group by German intelligence agencies. But it has surged in recent years and now leads national polls.

Saxony-Anhalt is the party’s stronghold: Surveys suggest it could win enough votes Sunday to claim a majority of seats in the state parliament, allowing it to form a government there without the support of centrist and leftist parties that refuse to work with it. Whether that happens depends on a combination of variables, which makes it difficult to say whether the party will prevail or fall just short.

If the AfD does take power, it would jolt Germany’s democracy, which was built after World War II from the rubble of Nazism with safeguards meant to block any party deemed extreme from ever running a state or national government.

“If a radical right-wing party came into a government in Germany, it would have a completely different meaning than if it happened in another country in the European Union,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said in July.

These concerns are partly rooted in the dog-whistle comments about Nazism from some party leaders, some of whom have belittled the Holocaust and used Nazi slogans. Some are close to Russia, prompting concerns that they might pass national secrets to Moscow. The party has also said that Islam is incompatible with the German constitution and vowed mass deportations of immigrants — leading government officials to accuse the party of treating Germans from migrant backgrounds as second-class citizens.

The AfD rejects claims of extremism and says such accusations are politically motivated.

In Saxony-Anhalt, population 2.1 million, many residents see the AfD not as a threat, but a savior, meant to deliver them from unemployment, rising prices and a long list of cultural grievances that stretch back to the reunification of East and West Germany in 1990.

“Our economy is crashing,” Wolfram Adler, 67, a retired train driver, said in an interview this past week in the small town of Haldensleben, “and the AfD is our last chance.”

Experts say AfD’s support in Saxony-Anhalt is driven by a confluence of forces, many with deep historical roots. The region, in the former East Germany, lost jobs and residents after reunification. Its 8.1% unemployment rate is well above the national average. It has the oldest residents, by average age, of any state — and an entrenched sense of mistreatment from the West.

“We are still second-class citizens,” said Ursula Projahn, 74, a retiree from the town of Tangermünde.

AfD supporters in Saxony-Anhalt tend to mistrust democracy and oppose the influx of immigrants that Germany has experienced since 2015, said Marcel Lewandowsky, a political scientist at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Halle, the state’s second-largest city. Saxony-Anhalt has the second-lowest share, of any state, of residents with a family history of immigration.

Voters in the state also have relatively little affection left for Merz’s center-right Christian Democrats and his coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats, out of a sense those parties have done little to improve life in Saxony-Anhalt. Projahn said the Christian Democrats and another centrist party, the Free Democrats, had disappointed her with poor results, leading her to vote for the AfD this year.

Residents have fewer ties to unions, churches or other social institutions than their counterparts in western states, said Benjamin Höhne, a political scientist at Chemnitz University of Technology, making them more open to messages from parties positioning themselves as outsiders.

Nicolas Spohn, a political scientist at Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg, said many AfD supporters tell him they back the party because it has never before been in power.

The sentiment, he said, is: “Everything we’ve experienced so far hasn’t worked out the way we imagined it would. We’re disappointed, so let’s let someone who’s never been in this position give it a try.”

The AfD has nurtured that only-we-can-fix-it image with a social media strategy that amplifies long-running local anxieties. Its candidate to govern the state, Ulrich Siegmund, is a state lawmaker and photogenic TikTok star who promises to deport migrants and support native-born German families, so that they can have more children.

He also criticizes the publicly funded news media and Merz’s governing coalition, casting them as corrupt impediments to needed change.

“We’ve now reached a point where we say ‘enough is enough’ — we don’t want to go on like this,” Siegmund said at a rally this past week. “We want our good, old, safe Germany back at last.”

Opponents have criticized Siegmund’s plans as unworkable, and as unlikely to deliver the results voters want.

Lisa Heinen, 38, a resident of Saxony-Anhalt who does not support the AfD, said, “People are looking for simple answers to very complex questions, but that doesn’t get us anywhere as a society or as individuals.”

Sven Schulze, the incumbent governor of Saxony-Anhalt and a Christian Democrat, said in an interview this year that “the AfD is really great at describing problems, but not at solving problems.”

The AfD has profited from anger at government restrictions imposed during the coronavirus pandemic, which the party railed against, and more recently, at the wind turbines that dot some of the state’s landscapes.

Some Saxony-Anhalt residents retain sympathies for Russia, including people who feel nostalgia for communist rule in East Germany, which was backed by the Soviet Union. The sympathy endures amid accusations that Moscow is mounting a campaign of sabotage against German targets in response to Berlin’s wartime support for Ukraine.

The AfD also has warm ties with Russia, to the point that government leaders from other parties have discussed ways to avoid sharing sensitive intelligence with an AfD government should it gain power in Saxony-Anhalt, out of fear it might be passed on to Moscow.

Adler, like many in his state, said he was angry that federal leaders had moved to stop the flow of cheap Russian natural gas to Germany after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. Electricity prices rose sharply as a result, hampering energy-intensive manufacturers and straining consumers.

“Russia is not my enemy,” Adler said.

In interviews this past week, many AfD supporters explained their vote in terms that mimic the party’s social media messaging. Frank Krawczyk, 63, a school janitor from Haldensleben, said he believed that ethnic Germans were being replaced by Muslims. He said immigrants can afford to have as many as eight children without having to work, thanks to generous state subsidies, while native-born Germans can afford to have only two, while working. Neither claim is true.

Many also expressed deep dissatisfaction with Merz, whose popularity has fallen since he took office in May 2025.

Despite those headwinds, Schulze, the incumbent, could still retain the governorship depending on how many votes the AfD receives and how many parties clear a threshold to claim seats in parliament.

If the AfD fails to win a majority of seats in the state parliament, other parties could band together to form a government, most likely led by the Christian Democrats. That would retain the so-called firewall in German politics, where no other major party will work with the AfD. Siegmund seemed to be preparing his supporters for such an outcome in rallies this week.

But even if the AfD falls short in Saxony-Anhalt, experts said, the forces propelling its rise are unlikely to go away.

“People here in eastern Germany are neither more right-wing than people in other federal states, nor are they more authoritarian than in other federal states,” said Spohn, the political scientist in Magdeburg. “They’re simply more frustrated.”

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