Germany wakes up to 'unsettling' AfD victory

The far right AfD leaders of Germany celebrate victory in elections

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won the Saxony-Anhalt state election but without an absolute majority in parliament. Other European nations were wrestling with the impact of the results. 

Preliminary official results confirm AfD short of ruling majority despite landslide victory

The preliminary official results from Sunday's state elections have confirmed the AfD's historic win with tabulations remaining unchanged from a few hours prior.

The far-right party captured 39 seats in all, meaning it eclipsed all other competitors, yet fell just shy of winning an outright ruling majority. 

Holocaust survivor Eva Umlauf, president of the Berlin-based International Auschwitz Committee, on Monday told Germany's Catholic News Agency (KNA), "this election result scares me."

Umlauf then asked, "What path is Germany on? The one that it traveled before?"

After saying Holocaust survivors "never thought it possible" that a right-wing extremist party would again be voted into power at the state level — the AfD was also the largest faction voted into Thuringia's state parliament in 2024 — she added that she would continue to fight for democracy and for the memory of those six million Jews killed during the Nazi era. 

Umlauf said survivors "owe it to our murdered relatives" to keep their memory alive, calling it "our obligation to young people in Germany."

Far-right AfD on the rise (mostly) for 10 years now

Germany's far-right AfD has seen an almost constant rise in popularity since it was founded as an anti-euro party in April 2013. 

After capitalizing on concerns about then-Chancellor Angela Merkel's immigration policies, the party saw a slight drop in popularity in 2019 amid infighting and backlash against right-wing political violence before latching onto its next theme — what it described as "government overreach" during the Coronavirus pandemic.

International press calls AfD win a 'clear signal'

Outside Germany, international observers have called Sunday's AfD electoral victory in Saxony-Anhalt a "clear signal" for establishment parties.

New York's Wall Street Journal pointed to liberal immigration policy and weak economic performance as major contributors to the win, writing that conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz had disappointed voters despite exhibiting the right economic and foreign policy reform instincts. The WSJ called the victory a "warning" that voters could ultimately gamble on letting the AfD lead the country alone.

In Italy, La Repubblica described an "unsettling new page in German history," noting that Saxony-Anhalt's voters — who represent only three percent of Germany's overall population — had betrayed the vow "never again" by choosing a rightwing extremist party espousing the "inhumane ideas" of the Nazi era to run their state. 

Milan's Corriere della Sera echoed that sentiment, saying that Germany would "never be the same," and emphasizing that the whole of Europe seems as if "hypnotized by the extreme right."

And in Spain, El Pais wrote that the vote would force Europe's democrats to rethink the tired approach of either imitating far-right extremists in hopes of siphoning off voters or attempting to isolate them. The paper pointed to the AfD in Germany but also France's National Rally (RN) as examples of establishment parties failing to hold back extremists despite the clear moral and political imperative of rejecting cooperation with parties that "question the founding principles of post war democracies." – DW News