What Germany’s AfD proposes, and why it has unsettled the global far right

The Alternative for Germany’s sweeping victory in Saxony-Anhalt has triggered alarm across German and European politics. With 43.8% of the vote, the far-right party came within three seats of an absolute majority in the state parliament, winning 39 of its 83 seats.

The result leaves the AfD close to taking control of a state governed by the Christian Democratic Union, the party of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, since 2002. It also represents a postwar milestone: no far-right party had previously won a German state election and been left in such a concrete position to try to form a government.

The AfD began in 2013 during the euro and debt crisis. Led by economists and academics including Bernd Lucke, a former CDU member and economics professor, it initially called for the controlled dismantling of the common European currency and criticized financial bailouts for countries such as Greece. In the 2013 federal election, it won 4.7%, just below the 5% threshold for entering the Bundestag.

Its transformation began the following year, as the party adopted more nationalist positions and sharper criticism of immigration. The 2015 refugee crisis, and then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers into Germany, accelerated that change. The radical wing pushed aside the founders and liberal factions. Lucke left in 2015.

Two years later, the AfD won 12.6% in the federal election, took 94 Bundestag seats and became Germany’s third-largest force. Since then, its growth has been especially strong in the former East German states, where it has drawn on economic discontent, distrust of Berlin’s political elites, opposition to immigration and a regional identity that still differs from western Germany.