A breakout force from the German far-left propping up the government of a party branch officially labelled “right-wing extremist (Opens in new window)” would be a striking illustration of the scrambled and fragmented spectrum of today’s politics. But overlapping policy positions do exist: the BSW rails against Germany’s renewable energy push and demands an end to German support for Ukraine in its war against Russia. Indeed, the tendrils of foreign policy run deep into local and regional votes. Not only have energy costs and the presence of Ukrainian refugees been key themes for both the AfD and the BSW, the recent drone attack in Leipzig, for which Berlin has pointed the finger at Russia (Opens in new window), gave ample ammunition for fearmongering about the war’s escalation, and what these parties see as Germany’s responsibility for it.
Should it gain power in Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD will have no say over foreign affairs; Germany’s constitution is quite clear on which prerogatives belong to the state governments. A far-right government there will be able to affect much in culture, education, inner security and some fields of migration (Opens in new window) policy. But what will really count if the AfD manages to take power in Saxony-Anhalt will be the platform it supplies. A government seat in Magdeburg, Saxony-Anhalt’s capital, would be the loudspeaker with which the AfD can further push the national agenda in its own direction.
The dilemmas to which the result in Saxony-Anhalt has given rise articulate some wider problems posed by the AfD’s popularity across Germany – and indeed of similar parties across the world. Most strikingly, the election reveals just how ubiquitous the AfD has become: they dominate political thinking and political coverage like no other force. They have colonised the minds of the other parties. In Germany, elections are now framed simply as binary contests between the populist far-right and the rest, squeezing out the possibility of any electoral discourse taking place on the far-right’s own terms.
It is a common pattern. In France, the centrist candidates for next year’s presidential election are already framing themselves simply as the best alternative to Marine Le Pen, the far-right frontrunner. Le Pen has distanced herself from the AfD (Opens in new window); her strategy of “de-demonisation” stands in contrast to the unapologetic radicalisation that marks out her German counterparts, especially in that country’s East. But the power of the two movements has produced comparable political logics.
And what of the consequences for Germany itself? The AfD’s success will further intensify the pressures on Friedrich Merz. Though still relatively young, the government in Berlin creaks and groans under the weight of its own contradictions. 2026 has been brutal. What started as a hopeful year of reform has collapsed into a year of despair. Both governing parties – the CDU along with the Social Democrats (SPD) – have had a nightmare summer, packed with policy deadlocks and internal fights and culminating in rumours about ambitions to depose both sets of party leaderships. After the election in Saxony-Anhalt, Merz said he would not resign, but instead promised – however vaguely – “consequences (Opens in new window)”. Miserable results in other (Opens in new window) forthcoming elections in Germany’s East might just push him over the edge.
In the short term, the new political reality will chip away further at Merz’s reform agenda – and at the “firewall” as well. And in the medium term, leaders in other European capitals must brace themselves for a fundamentally changed political culture in Germany – and thus for a government in Berlin that is ever more mired in its domestic troubles and incapable of initiative on the world stage.
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