How long can Germany resist the far right?

It was clear the AfD would win the Saxony-Anhalt election by a large margin months before its 6 September polling day. But when the results were revealed in the early evening, it still came as a shock. With almost 44 per cent of the vote, the far-right party had done even better than expected – its share of the vote was almost the same as all the other parties put together. Meanwhile, the collapse of the centre-right Christian Democrats, which had governed the eastern German state continuously for more than 20 years, was even more dramatic than expected: their share of the vote dropped from 37 per cent in the last election five years ago to just 17 per cent, though they remain the second largest party. However, because all of the other parties had ruled out the possibility of joining a coalition with the AfD, the big question was whether it would get the absolute majority inside the Landtag – the regional parliament – it needed to form a local government all by itself. In the end the party fell three seats short. Nonetheless, it is likely that Ulrich Siegmund, the AfD's 35-year-old candidate, will become the next minister-president of Saxony-Anhalt – either through the tacit support of the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance), a small 'conservative left-wing' party, or possibly through the defection of a few Christian Democrat members of the Landtag. It would mark the first time in the history of the postwar Federal Republic that a far-right party has taken power at the state level. Related