{"id":86558,"date":"2026-09-07T14:44:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-07T14:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/86558\/"},"modified":"2026-09-07T14:44:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-07T14:44:09","slug":"germanys-afd-wins-historic-victory-in-regional-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/86558\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany\u2019s AfD Wins Historic Victory in Regional Election"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Alternative for Germany (known by its German initials, AfD) <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/afd-saxony-anhalt-government\/a-79107331\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">won<\/a> handily in an election held in the German state of Saxony-Anhalt Sunday, garnering a historic 44 percent of the vote. The election marks the AfD\u2019s biggest electoral success since its founding in 2013, and suggests that the hard-right party\u2019s mixture of nationalism, populism, and opposition to mass immigration is increasingly popular among German voters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Despite trouncing its rivals\u2014the next highest vote-getters were the Christian Democratic Union, with 17 percent, and the Social Democratic Party, with 9 percent\u2014the AfD still may not be able to form a government. It is likely to fall three seats short of a majority in the state legislature, and most of Germany\u2019s other parties, which see the AfD as a threat to democracy, have committed to excluding it from power by keeping up a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2026\/09\/04\/germany-far-right-firewall-afd-01059834\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u201cfirewall\u201d<\/a> (though the small BSW party has not ruled out cooperation, and it may also be possible for the AfD to peel off individual legislators). <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sunday\u2019s result comes amid what many see as rising fortunes for right-wing populists across Europe: in France, Marine Le Pen <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ipsos.com\/fr-fr\/presidentielle-2027-marine-le-pen-conserve-une-avance-nette-dans-les-intentions-de-vote\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">appears<\/a> to be the frontrunner for next year\u2019s presidential election, while in the UK, recent <a href=\"https:\/\/yougov.com\/en-gb\/articles\/55475-voting-intention-30-31-august-2026-lab-23-ref-23-con-20-grn-13-ld-12\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">polling<\/a> shows Nigel Farage\u2019s Reform Party about even with the governing Labour Party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Alternative for Germany (known by its German initials, AfD) won handily in an election held in the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":86559,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[452,151,5,18837],"class_list":["post-86558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-afd","tag-europe","tag-germany","tag-populism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86558","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=86558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86558\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/86559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}