Μake us preferred on Google BERLIN–Germany’s Alternative for Germany scored a historic victory at a regional election on Sunday but it was unclear whether it would secure enough support to form Germany’s first far-right government since World War II, according to exit polls.
With between 44.5% and 44% of the votes, the party ended up ahead of earlier predictions and with more than twice the score of its closest rival, the center-right Christian Democratic Union.
Yet initial estimates suggested the party would fall just short of the absolute majority of seats in the parliament of Saxony-Anhalt, a state of 2.3 million inhabitants in the former East Germany, that would allow it to form a government without the support of other parties.
The figures could evolve in the AfD’s favor through the evening if some smaller parties failed to reach the 5% threshold needed to enter parliament.
The ballot is a stinging setback for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s government in Berlin, one of the most unpopular in recent history, and marks a new milestone in the shrinking of the political center that has made Europe’s largest economy increasingly difficult to govern.
The AfD’s apparent victory—the party’s best performance at an election since its creation 13 years ago—could shatter the political firewall that has kept the group out of power as all other parties refused to form a coalition with it, even as it leads in national polls.
The party’s populist agenda includes speeding up the deportation of undocumented migrants, increasing welfare benefits for native-born Germans, ending sanctions on Russia and German aid to Ukraine, and pulling the country out of the European Union.
Many of these are beyond the powers of a state government. Still, the AfD has pitched the election as a chance to show it can govern and implement policies outside of the mainstream consensus that has endured in the postwar era.
Write to Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com
