2026 Saxony-Anhalt state election

CDU

Then Minister-President Reiner Haseloff announced on 7 August 2025 that he would not seek re-election in 2026.^[12][13] Sven Schulze was selected to be the CDU's lead candidate.^[13][14] On 28 January 2026, Schulze was elected Minister-President.^[15] Previously, he had served as a member of the European Parliament for seven years. In 2021, he became the CDU's state chairman. Schulze was the State Minister for Economic Affairs in the Third Haseloff cabinet.^[13]

AfD

In a state party conference in Magdeburg, Ulrich Siegmund was selected by the AfD to be its lead candidate, getting 98.3% of the votes.^[16] Since 2016, Siegmund has been a member of the Landtag.^[17][18] In 2022, Oliver Kirchner, chair of the AfD parliamentary group in Saxony-Anhalt, proposed that both of them could be lead candidate.^[19] Shortly after, Siegmund began co-chairing the parliamentary group with Kirchner.^[19][20] Siegmund was chair of the social affairs committee until February 2024 when the parliament voted to remove him from the role due to his participation in the 2023 Potsdam far-right meeting.^[21]

The AfD campaign focused on restrictive immigration and remigration, including a proposed "deportation and remigration offensive" and tighter immigration controls.^[22] It proposed separate classes for refugee children as part of its education policy.^[23] The party also called for replacing compulsory schooling with a general education requirement and proposed a cash "welcome bonus" for each newborn.^[24] It sought to reduce public broadcasting to a "basic service" and to reverse the energy transition in favour of fossil fuels and nuclear power.^[22] Its programme also called for stricter asylum and security policies, including faster deportations and expanded detention capacity for deportees.^[22] Finally, it advocated a more explicitly patriotic cultural policy, including replacing the state's #moderndenken campaign with #deutschdenken, and replacing rainbow flags with German flags on public buildings.^[25]

On 13 August 2026, German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel had a mug-shot style photo of him on its cover,^[26] calling him "the most dangerous man in Germany".^[27] Siegmund used the magazine cover for his campaign, signing many copies, while Der Spiegel had to defend the move.^[28][29] During an AfD campaign event in Dessau-Roßlau (Saxony-Anhalt) in July 2026, AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla and Ulrich Siegmund would sing the former East German (GDR) national anthem "Risen from Ruins", and afterwards the German national anthem was also sung.^[30][31] Martin Huber from the Christian Social Union in Bavaria (CSU) criticised the playing of the former GDR anthem.^[32]

Left

Eva von Angern was selected to be the Left's lead candidate after getting a large majority of votes at a party conference in Leuna.^[33][34] She was nominated by the party's two state chairs: Janina Böttger and Hendrik Lange.^[35] Von Angern has been a member of the state parliament since 2002 and deputy chair of the Left's state parliamentary group from 2014 until she became the chair in 2020.^[34][36] Additionally, she was the lead candidate for her party in the 2021 Saxony-Anhalt state election,^[34][35] where the Left suffered record losses, although Dietmar Bartsch, the then-leader of The Left's national parliamentary group, argued that this was partly due to tactical voting.^[37]

SPD

Getting votes from 97 of the 98 delegates, Armin Willingmann was elected the lead candidate for the SPD at a party conference in Quedlinburg.^[38] Earlier, the party's state executive committee unanimously voted to nominate him for the position.^[39][40] During the Second Haseloff cabinet [de], Willingmann served as State Secretary in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Science for 6 months before becoming the Minister. In 2021, he ran to represent the constituency of Wernigerode in the state parliament.^[41][42] He came in second place, but was still able to become a member of parliament via the party list.^[18][42] In October 2021, Willingmann resigned from the state parliament and joined the Third Haseloff cabinet as the Minister of Science, Energy, Climate Protection and the Environment.^[43][44] After Minister-President Haseloff resigned, Willingmann maintained this position in the newly announced Schulze cabinet.^[45] In 2022, he was elected deputy chair of his party's state parliamentary group.^[46]

FDP

On 6 November 2025, the FDP's state delegates' assembly voted to select Lydia Hüskens, Minister of Infrastructure and Digitalization and Second Deputy Minister-President in the Third Haseloff cabinet and Schulze cabinet since 2021, as the party's lead candidate.^[47][48]

Greens

The Greens' state party conference in Wittenberg selected Susan Sziborra-Seidlitz as the party's lead candidate. 66 out of the 90 delegates voted for her.^[49][50] Since 2016, Sziborra-Seidlitz has been one of her party's state chairs.^[51][52] In 2021, she was elected to the state parliament, entering through the party list.^[18][49][52]

BSW

Due to internal party conflicts at the state level, the BSW selected two lead candidates: Thomas Schulze and Claudia Wittig. Neither of them have held public office before.^[53][54]

Result

The result was widely regarded as a breakthrough for the AfD,^[86][87][88] which won 43.8% of the vote, more than twice its share in the 2021 election,^[87][89] and higher than its share in the 2024 Thuringian state election, marking the first time that a far-right party has been on the cusp of power in a German state since World War II.^[86] The composition of the new AfD parliamentary group also attracted scrutiny, with several newly elected MPs having controversial backgrounds, including a former Stasi officer, a member who had participated in pornography films, and MPs linked to neo-Nazis and other far-right extremist networks.^[90][91]

Compared to 2021, when the AfD candidates won only one single-member constituency, this time the party won 38 of the 41 constituencies, with no need for overhang seats, while the Left won the remaining three.^[87] By contrast, the CDU suffered a landslide defeat. After having won 40 of 41 constituencies in 2021 with a vote share of 37.1%, which resulted in 40 directly elected CDU members and parliament size enlarged to 97, they did not win a single constituency in 2026 and—as parliament size remained at the regular 83 seats due to AfD winning over 43%—only won 15 seats via the party list, losing 62.5% of their MPs. The CDU's popular vote share fell to 17.2%, its weakest result in the state in decades.^[92]

The state's other parties saw mixed results. Compared to 2021, voter share increased for the SPD (8.4% to 9.3%) and the Greens (5.9% to 8.9%). ^[93] Each party won eight seats. This was a slight loss of representation for the SPD but a gain for the Greens, who saw their greatest ever share of the vote in a Saxony-Anhalt election^[93][94] The Left also won eight seats, declining from 11.0% of the vote in 2021 to 8.6% in 2026.^[93] The BSW, which had split from the left since 2021, won 5.3% of the vote and five seats in its first Saxony-Anhalt state election.^[94] The FDP's share fell sharply from 6.4% to 2.6%, thus failing to reach the 5% threshold required for representation in the Landtag.^[93]

The Konrad Adenauer Foundation identified a generally pessimistic assessment of the economic situation and the future, as well as material and identity-related concerns, as important characteristics of the AfD's support base.^[92] The election showed a high degree of electoral volatility.^[92] The AfD benefited disproportionately from the sharp increase in turnout to 77.8%, mobilising an estimated 170,000 voters who had not voted in the previous election.^[93] Voter-transfer estimates indicated that the AfD's gains came from several parties, as well as from the previous non-voter pool, rather than from a single source.^[92] The result was also widely interpreted as a protest against the federal government rather than solely as an endorsement of the AfD. In Saxony-Anhalt, 87% of voters said they were dissatisfied with the federal government, while economist Marcel Fratzscher described the election primarily as a vote of no confidence in it, highlighting the role of dissatisfaction with the government alongside support for the AfD.^[86][87][92] The election nevertheless had significance beyond the state itself, as AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund presented the victory as a first step towards national power in 2029, while the result was welcomed by far-right movements elsewhere in Europe and viewed as part of a broader right-wing nationalist trend.^[86][87][95]

Tactical voting

Tactical voting played a role in the election result.^[93] According to the Centre for Eastern Studies, some opponents of the AfD, including CDU supporters, voted for the SPD or the Greens in order to help them clear the 5% electoral threshold and thereby reduce the AfD's chances of securing an absolute majority.^[93] According to voter-transfer analysis cited by the Centre for Eastern Studies, the SPD and the Greens respectively received an estimated 19,000 and 18,000 votes from CDU voters.^[93] The Heinrich Böll Foundation likewise assessed that the initiatives promoting tactical voting contributed substantially to the SPD and the Greens remaining in the Landtag, thereby preventing the AfD from obtaining an absolute majority.^[94]

The tactical-voting campaign was particularly significant because the electoral threshold made the parliamentary arithmetic highly sensitive to the performance of smaller parties.^[93] The strategy succeeded in preventing an AfD absolute majority,^[96] although it did not determine which parties would ultimately be able to form a government.^[94] The unexpectedly strong result for the Greens was attributed in part to tactical voters, particularly former CDU voters, while the party also benefited from the mobilisation of previous non-voters.^[94] The Left also experienced tactical vote transfers, with its leadership acknowledging that some of its second votes went to the SPD and the Greens as part of efforts to prevent an AfD majority.^[97]

Firewall policy

Despite its historic result, the AfD did not obtain an absolute majority,^[98] and therefore could not form a government on its own.^[89] The result consequently left the AfD as the largest parliamentary force while the other parties faced the question of whether and how to form a majority without cooperation with it.^[94] As a result, the outcome was characterised by a combination of unprecedented electoral support for the AfD and continued political barriers to an AfD-led government.^[89] The result intensified debate over Germany's political firewall against the AfD. The scale of the AfD's victory placed particular pressure on the established refusal of mainstream parties to cooperate with it, while the BSW's entry into the Landtag created a potential route to an AfD-led majority and raised the possibility of cooperation across the traditional political divide.^{[89][99][100]}

The election sparked a debate over whether maintaining the political firewall remained preferable to allowing the AfD, as the largest parliamentary force, a path into government in Saxony-Anhalt, where governing would expose the party to the practical responsibilities and consequences of implementing its programme.^{[89][99][100]} The question was not only whether the AfD could enter government, but also whether governing could put its electoral strength to a practical test. Siegmund presented himself as a more approachable figure than some other AfD politicians while maintaining the party's core positions, and political scientist Wolfgang Merkel noted that whether he could govern remained unproven.^{[89][100][101]} An AfD-led government would therefore expose the party to the practical constraints and consequences of implementing its programme, rather than allowing it to remain primarily in opposition.^[99][100]

At the same time, the assumption that excluding the AfD is necessarily more effective than allowing it to govern remained contested as the election raised a broader strategic question: whether continued exclusion could contain the AfD, or whether allowing it to assume governing responsibility would instead expose the limits of its programme and potentially alter its support. Some analysts argued that the political firewall had not prevented the normalisation of far-right positions, while others continued to regard cooperation with the AfD as unacceptable given its extremist classification and political programme.^[86][95][99]

The immediate alternatives were consequently more complex than a simple choice between an AfD government and its exclusion. The CDU, the SPD, the Greens, and the Left continued to reject governing with the AfD, while the BSW's five seats gave it a potentially decisive role and opened discussion of forms of cooperation that stopped short of a conventional coalition.^{[86][99][102]} This left the post-election debate centred not only on whether the firewall should hold, but also on what form of government could replace it, and on whether the AfD should be allowed to assume executive responsibility despite lacking an outright majority.^{[89][99][100]}