{"id":678936,"date":"2026-09-08T17:57:32","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T17:57:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/678936\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T17:57:32","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T17:57:32","slug":"whats-behind-afds-surge-to-victory-in-saxony-anhalt-and-what-are-they-promising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/678936\/","title":{"rendered":"What’s behind AfD’s surge to victory in Saxony-Anhalt, and what are they promising?"},"content":{"rendered":"

ALTERNATIVE FOR GERMANY\u2019S success in the state of Saxony-Anhalt was predictable, given the far-right party\u2019s consistent rise in the polls over the last few years, but the scale of their vote share in Sunday\u2019s election came as a surprise.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Polling had projected the party would get 40 to 42% of the vote. In the end, it won just under 44% in the state of roughly two million people.<\/p>\n

AfD was seeking an absolute majority in the state legislature so that it could get past the so-called firewall of mainstream parties that refuse to work with them.<\/p>\n

They fell three seats short, with 39 members in an 83-member parliament<\/a>. There remains a path to power for AfD in the eastern state, though, since one party that has criticised the firewall unexpectedly picked up five seats of their own.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So how did a party with documented ties to neo-Nazis manage to come out on top in a part of Germany once ruled by the Soviet Union?\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Radical policies<\/p>\n

One of AfD\u2019s flagship policy proposals is \u201cremigration\u201d, a far-right plan\u00a0to ethnically cleanse European countries of non-white people.<\/a><\/p>\n

The idea comes from \u201cIdentitarianism\u201d, a pan-European white nationalist movement whose lead advocate is an Austrian activist and former member of a neo-Nazi group named Martin Sellner.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AfD politicians have sought to distinguish their party\u2019s interpretation of remigration from that of Sellner\u2019s, although they use the same term.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The party\u2019s leader in Saxony-Anhalt, Ulrich Siegmund, has said he wants to target irregular migrants with a \u201cremigration and deportation offensive\u201d from day one.<\/p>\n

The attendance of AfD politicians, including Siegmund, at a secret meeting about remigration where Sellner was the keynote speaker, is one reason why Germany\u2019s national security service has categorised the Saxony-Anhalt branch of the AfD as part of a right-wing extremist group.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sellner\u2019s version of remigration would see not only the deportation of immigrants without legal status, but also non-white legal immigrants and their European-born children.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"berlin-germany-07th-sep-2026-alice-weidel-right-and-tino-chrupalla-left-the-federal-chairpersons-of-the-afd-are-attending-the-federal-press-conference-along-with-ulrich-siegmund-the-afd\"
\n Ulrich Siegmund (centre) celbrates with AfD co-chairs Tino Chrupalla (left) and Alice Weidel (right) Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n

Alamy Stock Photo\n<\/p>\n

AfD also has a favourable view of Vladimir Putin\u2019s government in Russia, and has said it would remove refugee status from Ukrainians in Germany.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The party is also outrightly anti-Muslim, saying it would ban the call to prayer, minarets on mosques and the wearing of the burka.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AfD has also touted its \u201canti-woke\u201d agenda, which includes vows to replace LGBTQ pride rainbow flags at public schools with German ones.<\/p>\n

Siegmund also wants to stop school attendance being compulsory and rewrite school history books, which focus too much on the crimes of Adolf Hitler\u2019s Third Reich for his liking.<\/p>\n

Four members of Siegmund\u2019s inner circle were members of a now-banned organisation<\/a> that modelled itself on the Hitler Youth, despite former members of the Homeland-Loyal German Youth being officially barred from joining AfD.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Everything is possible\u2019<\/p>\n

There were a couple of elements that marked AfD\u2019s campaign in Saxony-Anhalt as different from those the party has run before, according to historian and journalist Katja Hoyer.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe campaign was new and different,\u201d she told The Journal, explaining that AfD\u2019s rhetorical approach has traditionally been more of an \u201cangry\u201d one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The party used to use slogans like \u201cEnough\u201d, but this time round its campaign slogan was \u201cEverything is possible\u201d.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

She also said that in the party\u2019s regional leader Ulrich Siegmund AfD have found someone who is genuinely popular by himself, rather than simply being a part of a popular party.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A former perfume salesman, Siegmund (35) was originally a member of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, which is currently led by Germany\u2019s chancellor, Friedrich Merz.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He switched to AfD at the age of 24 and entered the Saxony-Anhalt parliament two years later.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As one of AfD\u2019s most recognisable representatives and a kind of poster boy for the party, Siegmund\u2019s popularity is undeniable.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He has hundreds of thousands of followers across multiple social media platforms and during a campaign event last week people queued for hours to get his autograph.<\/p>\n

Many brought copies of the front page of an edition of the weekly news magazine Der Spiegel that labelled Siegmund \u201cGermany\u2019s most dangerous man\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"26-july-2026-saxony-anhalt-weibenfels-ulrich-siegmund-center-right-the-afds-top-candidate-for-the-state-election-in-saxony-anhalt-held-an-autograph-session-in-the-market-square-the-event-was\"
\n Ulrich Siegmund signing a supporter’s T-shirt during a campaign event. Alamy Stock Photo<\/p>\n

Alamy Stock Photo\n<\/p>\n

Having it both ways<\/p>\n

Another feature of the campaign was a two-sided approach to the eastern state\u2019s communist history, which Hoyer said was distinctively \u201cregional\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

On one hand, she said, AfD cast their campaign as a political revolution like the one against Soviet rule that brought down the Berlin Wall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe fought a dictatorship once and we can do it again,\u201d she said, summarising that aspect of the campaign.<\/p>\n

But on the other hand, she said the party also tends to use \u201cpeople\u2019s positive experiences as well\u201d, tapping into their regional identity.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said AfD is \u201cinternally quite split\u201d along eastern and western lines and that the party takes a different tack depending on where they are seeking election.<\/p>\n

One campaign stunt featured Siegmund at the head of a motorcade of thousands of supporters riding Simson mopeds, a model known as the \u201cVespa of East Germany\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The adoption of the Simson bike as a campaign symbol has been criticised by the descendants of the original Jewish owners of the company who were forced to flee the Nazis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Der
\n The cover of a recent Der Spiegel issue that call Ulrich Siegmund Germany’s most dangerous man Screenshot – Der Spiegel<\/p>\n

Screenshot – Der Spiegel\n<\/p>\n

\u2018Ahead of the curve\u2019<\/p>\n

AfD is more popular in the former Soviet east of the country than it is in the west, but according to Hoyer states like Saxony-Anhalt are \u201cjust ahead of the curve\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nationally, AfD is the most popular party \u2013 currently polling at 27.6% \u2013 and the main rival to the woefully unpopular CDU, which is lagging six points behind.\u00a0<\/p>\n

CDU leader Merz admitted today that his party had its worst election result in decades at the weekend, picking up just 15 seats.<\/p>\n

Merz himself is very unpopular and acknowledged today that his own standing among the German public contributed to the CDU\u2019s losing about half its previous support over the weekend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI know that I personally was a constant topic in this election campaign. We know that the reforms were a constant topic in this election campaign,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Siegmund said Merz had been\u00a0\u201ca very good campaigner for us in this election campaign\u201d.<\/p>\n

With the parliament seats now filled, all eyes will be on negotiations over the formation of a state government, which Siegmund said today are already underway.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The\u00a0B\u00fcndnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) party, which Hoyer described as \u201cfundamentally an anti-establishment party\u201d, has been critical of the firewall maintained by all other established parties in the past.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Founded in 2024 as a breakaway from The Left party, its politics are economically left but socially and culturally conservative, which Hoyer described as \u201ca very east German thing\u201d.\u00a0<\/p>\n

She said they could \u201cpotentially\u201d lend their votes to AfD and therefore give a far-right party governing power in a German state for the first time since World War II.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With reporting from AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ALTERNATIVE FOR GERMANY\u2019S success in the state of Saxony-Anhalt was predictable, given the far-right party\u2019s consistent rise in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":678937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[41],"tags":[285643,56883,9,10,287333,10414,13,14,287334,6621,6,11,12,15,16,32078,5,223771,285644,7,8,285645,65,66,67],"class_list":["post-678936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world","tag-afd","tag-alice-weidel","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-east-germany","tag-far-right","tag-featured-news","tag-featurednews","tag-german-far-right","tag-germany","tag-headlines","tag-latest-news","tag-latestnews","tag-main-news","tag-mainnews","tag-nazi-germany","tag-news","tag-remigration","tag-saxony-anhalt","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories","tag-ulrich-siegmund","tag-world","tag-world-news","tag-worldnews"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/117236718687469512","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=678936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/678936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/678937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=678936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=678936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=678936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}