The Alternative for Germany’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt has turned a long-running debate over the far right’s rise into an immediate question of power. AfD won 43.8% of second votes, compared with 17.2% for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU, more than doubling its 2021 result. Turnout reached 77.8%.
AfD will hold 39 of the 83 seats in the new state parliament. An absolute majority requires 42, so the party cannot form a government on its own. Its lead candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, has nevertheless said he will seek a stable majority, keeping open the possibility of Germany’s first state government led by AfD.
The most plausible source of additional votes may be the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, which won 5.3% and five seats. Its state leadership has left open talks with all parties, including AfD. The CDU and other established parties, however, continue to defend the “firewall” against coalition cooperation with the far right.
Russia was a prominent theme in AfD’s campaign. The party opposes further military aid to Ukraine, calls for sanctions on Moscow to be lifted and has for years advocated restoring energy ties with Russia. In July, co-leader Tino Chrupalla again demanded an end to German weapons deliveries to Kyiv.
Daycom’s preliminary analysis of open and verified material indicates that attributing the result solely to Russian influence would be misleading. AfD is growing on genuine voter frustration over the economy, social policy, migration and the federal government, while pro-Russian rhetoric overlays and amplifies those existing grievances.
At the same time, the overlap between some AfD arguments and Kremlin messaging is substantive, not merely rhetorical. Both Moscow and the party portray sanctions as hurting Germany more than Russia, rearmament as dangerous escalation, and the rejection of Russian energy as a policy that works against German economic interests.
Shortly before the election, Vladimir Putin attacked Merz using much the same political logic. He argued that the chancellor was losing public trust, failing to defend national interests and forcing Germans to pay through factory closures, job losses and declining living standards.
The idea of “national interests” is equally central to AfD. Its federal platform calls for the immediate removal of economic sanctions on Russia, the restoration of Nord Stream and a neutral Ukraine outside both NATO and the European Union. The party presents that agenda as a return to pragmatic foreign policy.
Electoral data, however, suggests that the Russia issue works most strongly within an already established political identity. In Saxony-Anhalt, 57% of those surveyed supported ending weapons deliveries to Ukraine. Among AfD voters, that figure reached 92%, revealing an almost complete consensus within the party’s core electorate.
Perceptions of Moscow divide AfD from the rest of German politics even more sharply. Nationwide, 56% of Germans regard Russia as a strong or very strong threat to national security. Among AfD supporters, roughly two-thirds instead see that threat as weak or do not regard Russia as a significant threat at all.
The divide is particularly visible in eastern Germany. Attitudes toward Russia in the former East Germany have historically differed from those in the west, while distrust of federal institutions is also stronger. For some voters, restoring cheap Russian energy looks less like a geopolitical pivot than a way to recover economic predictability.
Germany’s economic backdrop gives AfD material for that argument. The country endured an energy shock after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, lost much of the old model built on inexpensive gas and simultaneously faced weak industrial growth. AfD attributes these problems primarily to decisions made in Berlin and Brussels.
Yet the election results show that economics was not the only force shaping voter behavior. Social security and peace in Europe ranked among the most important concerns after the vote. AfD also received the highest level of trust among Saxony-Anhalt parties on the question of who could best preserve peace in Europe.
The national picture makes the result even more consequential. In a September poll, AfD stood at 27% and ranked first, while the CDU/CSU bloc was at 21%. Saxony-Anhalt therefore looks less like an isolated eastern anomaly than the sharpest expression of a trend that has already spread beyond one region.
For Merz, the challenge is particularly acute because his government is trying simultaneously to rebuild Germany’s defense capacity and sustain support for Ukraine. After the election, the chancellor acknowledged the scale of the defeat but stressed that AfD had fallen short of a majority. His CDU dropped from 40 seats to 15.
Relations with Moscow, meanwhile, continue to deteriorate. The federal government has formally blamed Russia for an attempted explosive-drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport and warned of an enduring threat from hybrid operations. Moscow rejected the allegation, while Putin claimed the evidence had been planted.
That dynamic is creating a self-reinforcing political cycle. The more often authorities warn about Russian sabotage and the need for greater defense spending, the easier it becomes for AfD to portray those measures to its supporters as excuses for failed domestic policy. Moscow’s denials then reinforce distrust of Berlin.
There is, however, no evidence that the Kremlin itself created Germany’s current political discontent. Migration, prices, pensions, economic uncertainty and frustration with traditional parties have domestic causes of their own. Russian narratives are effective because they enter conflicts that already exist rather than generating them from scratch.
A separate challenge for German politics is the status of AfD itself in Saxony-Anhalt. Since 2023, the state office for the protection of the constitution has formally classified the party’s regional branch as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization, citing threats to human dignity and democratic principles.
That organization now holds 39 seats and needs only a handful of additional votes to gain power. The Saxony-Anhalt result therefore goes far beyond a debate over attitudes toward Russia. It shows how economic frustration, fear of change, distrust of elites and a foreign-policy divide can combine to reshape German democracy.
