Germany’s Far Right Just Misses Majority in Crucial State Election
New York Times · LC · trust 41/100
The Alternative for Germany, or AfD, trounced its rivals but was left unsure if it will be able to govern in Saxony-Anhalt. The result shocked Germany.
Listen · 6:40 min Share full article Ulrich Siegmund, the lead candidate for the far-right party Alternative for Germany, with colleagues in Saxony-Anhalt on Sunday. Credit... Ronny Hartmann/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images By Jim Tankersley Christopher F. Schuetze and Ashley Southall
Jim Tankersley reported from Berlin, and Christopher F. Schuetze and Ashley Southall from Magdeburg, Germany.
If those results hold, the AfD, as the party is known by its German initials, could still assume power in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt in the coming weeks, depending on the negotiations among rival parties that have vowed not to support an AfD government.
Saxony-Anhalt is a relatively small state, and the heart of the AfD’s power base in eastern Germany. But the election result sent shock waves through the country’s political system, which was designed after World War II to prevent extremist parties from ever returning to power.
“The AfD’s electoral victory in Saxony-Anhalt is less a reflection of the appeal of its political agenda than a stark demonstration of the political establishment’s failure to articulate a convincing vision for the state’s economic, political and social future,” said Jana Puglierin, the head of the Berlin branch of the European Council on Foreign Relations.
The political establishment has treated the AfD as a pariah. Still, the party tapped into voter frustration on a wide range of economic and social issues to win about 44 percent of the vote in the state, and was set to claim 39 of the 83 seats in the Parliament.
“We’ve made history, and we’re taking our country back,” Ulrich Siegmund, the party’s candidate to lead the state, told a cheering crowd on Sunday. “It all starts here in Saxony-Anhalt.”
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