Saxony-Anhalt Election: No Party Is Safe in the State

Whatever happens in Saxony-Anhalt’s state election on Sunday, the state could become a laboratory for a new form of government. The AfD might lead a government for the first time, either with an absolute majority or as a minority administration. Alternatively, the other parties could find a way to form a government without it.

Saxony-Anhalt has experience with political experiments. From 1994 to 2002, the SPD governed as a minority administration tolerated by the PDS, the successor party to the SED and predecessor of today’s Left party. Known as the Magdeburg Model, it lasted longer than any other minority government in German history.

The state has also been the testing ground for two coalition arrangements that were first tried nationally there. In 2016, it formed Germany’s first Kenia coalition, bringing together the SPD, Greens and CDU. It later produced the first Germany coalition, made up of the CDU, SPD and FDP.

A review of 36 years of election results looks at how parties in Saxony-Anhalt have risen quickly and then fallen just as quickly, and what that history could mean for the AfD.