Afd Wins Elections In Saxony-Anhalt

International and national attention for today's elections in Saxony-Anhalt were huge. A state with some 2.3 million inhabitants drew all the attention as the AfD had been leading the polls for a long while. The latest polls have been relatively spot on. According to the estimated results, at 8pm CET, the AfD received some 44% of the votes, while the CDU, of the incumbent minister-president, came in at 18%. The Left Party, SPD and Greens all received some 9% each. The BSW stands close to 5%. Comparisons with the last state election show dramatic changes, with the AfD more than doubling its votes and the CDU losing half of the votes. However, there are some differences with the comparison. In last year's federal elections, the AfD came in at 38.8%, while the CDU stood at 23.5%. The participation rate in today's elections was some 80%, compared with 27% in 2021.

While the AfD's victory is clear and is the party's best performance ever, it remains unclear whether the AfD will be able to lead the next government. Currently, the AfD falls one seat short in parliament of having an absolute majority. This could still change in the course of the evening until we get the official preliminary results. A lot will now depend on whether the BSW will make it into parliament (remember the German 5%-threshold) as all other parties have ruled out any support for the AfD. The BSW has been less clear. At the same time, if the AfD stays short of the absolute majority, two options remain: an AfD minority government or a coalition of the rest. Neither option would promise a stable government.

The AfD's agenda includes speeding up the deportation of undocumented migrants, increasing welfare benefits for native-born Germans, ending sanctions on Russia and German aid to Ukraine, and pulling the country out of the European Union. However, let's be clear, most of these ideas do not fall under the power of state governments. Many of these are beyond the powers of a state government.

The next days and weeks will bring lots of speculation about what the win of the AfD will mean for the German economy. Sure, there could be a symbolic impact on foreign investors, but let's not forget that Saxony-Anhalt is not the entire German economy. Therefore, let's wait with in terms of this speculation until a government has been formed. What seems to be a bit clearer is the fact that the AfD is shaking up an increasingly fragmented political landscape in Germany. Today's results also show that last moment mobilisation against the AfD, as witnessed in other states before, does no longer work.

For national politics, today's results have clearly brought the feared shock effects. While the SPD seems to be happy that it made it into parliament, the CDU suffered a severe defeat (though partly due to so-called strategic voting to ensure that smaller parties make it into parliament). Don't expect any short-term changes. All parties will now wait for the elections in two weeks, in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, before drawing more structural conclusions. However, it increasingly looks as if the state elections this autumn will give the federal government coalition a headwind, rather than a tailwind. The main question will be whether both coalition partners will move closer together to push through with reforms or whether a survival instinct leads to the coalition's self-destruction.

All in all, today's results should not really be a shock. Instead, today's election results are just a new climax of a much longer-lasting trend. A trend that many other European countries have experienced already some time ago: an established right-wing party, a crumbling of the political centre and a fragmented political landscape. Forming stable coalitions will be increasingly difficult. Not the best situation for a country and an economy that still needs substantial reforms.

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