Who voted for AfD? The far right’s support across Saxony-Anhalt

Alternative for Germany has won Saxony-Anhalt’s election with 43.8% of the vote, coming close to an absolute majority and more than doubling its 2021 result. The CDU suffered the opposite fate, falling from 37% to 17%, its worst result in the region.

AfD’s victory covered the entire state. Led locally by Ulrich Siegmund, the far-right party won in all 218 municipalities, from small villages to the largest cities. It took 33% in Magdeburg and 30% in Halle, a city of 226,000 people. Its margin was even stronger in the smallest municipalities, where it won one in every two votes, compared with 31% in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants.

Turnout was another defining feature of the election. Seventy-eight percent of eligible voters cast ballots, 17 percentage points more than in 2021 and the highest participation rate in any of the state’s eight elections since reunification in 1990. The election did not produce the largest number of voters, however. In 1990, 127,000 more people voted, but the electorate has shrunk by more than half a million since then.

AfD led among men and women, younger and older voters, and people with different levels of education, though its support varied across groups. According to an Infratest dimap survey for ARD, it won 50% among men and 39% among women. It performed particularly strongly among voters aged 35 to 59, taking more than half their votes.

The SPD edged up, the Greens gained three points and Die Linke declined slightly. The nationalist left-wing BSW, formed after splitting from Die Linke, entered the state parliament with 5.3%. Despite its opposite ideological position, BSW could help make an AfD-led government possible.