Voting Begins in Closely Watched Elections in Germany

Voters in Saxony-Anhalt began casting ballots in an election that could bring the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, into power in one of Germany’s 16 states for the first time in the country’s postwar history.

Polling stations opened at 8 a.m. Greenwich Mean Time, or 9 a.m. Lithuanian time, and were due to remain open until 6 p.m. Nearly 1.7 million citizens over 18 were eligible to vote. Counting was to begin after the polls closed, with the head of the state election commission expecting preliminary final results on Monday morning.

Voters in Magdeburg were electing a new state parliament. They cast one vote for an individual candidate and a second for a party. The parliament will later choose the state premier.

Opinion polls showed the AfD far ahead of the conservative Christian Democrats, or CDU, which leads Saxony-Anhalt’s current three-party coalition. More than 40% of respondents viewed the anti-immigration party favorably, and it hoped to win an outright majority of seats for the first time. Such a result could allow it to bypass the established parties’ much-discussed firewall against cooperation with the far right.

The AfD’s strength has grown despite intelligence monitoring of its Saxony-Anhalt branch for what authorities describe as confirmed extremist views. Its program calls for a task force to speed up deportations, renewed student exchanges with Russia, separate classes for children seeking asylum and a ban on rainbow-colored flags in schools.

A decisive AfD victory would remove current CDU state premier Sven Schulze and could make 35-year-old Ulrich Siegmund the youngest state premier in German history. It would also send a major shock through national politics, as the party already leads polls ahead of the federal election expected in 2029.