Germany\u2019s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a landslide victory in a key regional election on Sunday in the ex-communist east, according to exit polls, but it remains unclear whether it can win an absolute majority to govern.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have made history today,\u201d said a jubilant Ulrich Siegmund, the 35-year-old lead candidate of the anti-immigration AfD in Saxony-Anhalt state, as the vote count continued.<\/p>\n
The AfD won at least 44 per cent, more than doubling its support, and far ahead of the 18.5 per cent for the centre-right CDU of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, according to projections by public broadcasters ARD and ZDF.<\/p>\n
The CDU\u2019s state premier Sven Schulze called the outcome \u201ca severe blow\u201d but \u2013 depending on the final count and the fate of smaller parties \u2013 may still try to cobble together a multiparty coalition to cling to power.<\/p>\n
All major parties have agreed on a \u201cfirewall\u201d of non-cooperation with the AfD, whose state branch is categorised as \u201cright-wing extremist\u201d by Germany\u2019s domestic intelligence agency.<\/p>\n
The AfD\u2019s national co-leader Alice Weidel \u2013 who has long condemned the \u201cfirewall\u201d concept as undemocratic \u2013 praised her party\u2019s result as \u201csensational\u201d and said that \u201cwe have received a very clear mandate to govern here\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a landslide victory in a key regional election on Sunday in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[452,181,18,4199,393,5,253,42623,1831,3849,32698,61815,4070,1633,61816],"class_list":["post-86162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-afd","tag-alternative-for-germany","tag-berlin","tag-cdu","tag-friedrich-merz","tag-germany","tag-iran","tag-magdeburg","tag-russia","tag-saxony-anhalt","tag-sven-schulze","tag-tangermunde","tag-ulrich-siegmund","tag-world-war-ii","tag-yougov"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}