Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) scored the largest election victory in its history on Sunday, winning 43.9% of the vote in the regional election in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, according to official results reported by international news agencies. The result brings the party closer than ever to holding real governing power in Germany, backed by a migration agenda built around mass deportations and what the party calls "remigration."

The numbers

AfD's top candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, led the party to 573,360 votes, translating into 39 of the state parliament's (Landtag) 83 seats — a gain of 16 seats and a 23.1-point swing compared with 2021, when AfD took 20.8%. The result falls just short of the 42 seats needed for an outright majority. Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which had governed Saxony-Anhalt for 24 years, collapsed to 17.2% and 15 seats, losing nearly half its previous support. The Social Democrats took 9.3%, the Greens 8.9% and the Left Party 8.6%, each securing eight seats; a new party, BSW, entered parliament with 5.3% and five seats. Turnout hit a record 77.8%, up from 60% in 2021.

"We have written history"

Declaring victory, Siegmund said the party had written history and argued AfD now holds a clear mandate to govern. The win builds on AfD's performance in last year's federal election, where the party topped 20% nationally, and on its first-place finish in neighboring Thuringia in 2024, with 32.8% of the vote.

What AfD is proposing

Siegmund campaigned on what he called a "deportation and remigration offensive." The party's manifesto lays out 43 measures amounting, in its own organizers' words, to a full reversal of current migration policy: an immediate and total ban on immigration from selected non-EU countries, an end to the constitutional right to asylum, mandatory work requirements for refugees and asylum seekers, restrictions on naturalization, and the creation of a dedicated deportation task force, explicitly compared by party officials to the United States' ICE agency. The manifesto also calls for barring churches from housing refugees and restricting the display of LGBTQ symbols in schools.

Can AfD actually deliver on it?

Despite the scale of the win, AfD's path to implementing its agenda is far from guaranteed. An analysis by Germany's Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology found that 21 of the party's 56 proposed migration measures could only be implemented at the national or European Union level, beyond the reach of a single state government. Constitutional law experts also note that several proposals, including ending the right to asylum, directly conflict with Germany's Basic Law, the country's constitution.

Even so, experts caution that a state government under AfD control would still have meaningful tools available. A researcher at the Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History Potsdam said the party could use existing law more aggressively to revoke residency permits and push enforcement to the edge of what courts allow, noting that other German states have already pursued aggressive deportation practices that have drawn legal challenges.

The political "firewall" under pressure

AfD's rise once again tests Germany's informal "firewall" — the refusal by mainstream parties to govern alongside the far right, a stance rooted in the country's Nazi past. Germany's domestic intelligence service has classified AfD's branch in Saxony-Anhalt as a confirmed right-wing extremist movement, a label the party rejects along with all accusations of anti-constitutional conduct. Merz reiterated Sunday that his party would not cooperate with AfD under any circumstances, though reporting suggests other parties entering the new state parliament may be less committed to upholding that line, raising the possibility that Saxony-Anhalt could struggle to form a government without AfD.

Analysts describe the result as part of a broader trend across Europe, where far-right, anti-immigration parties have steadily gained ground among voters frustrated with mainstream governments over migration management and economic stagnation.