AfD Leads Saxony-Anhalt at 42% Ahead of Sunday Vote — SkimNews
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- AfD leads Saxony-Anhalt polls at 42% according to Infratest-Dimap's survey of 1,511 voters between Aug. 24–25, with the regional election set for Sunday, Sept. 6
- Saxony-Anhalt's AfD is designated as right-wing extremist by the state's Office for the Protection of the Constitution, with party members accused of using Nazi-associated language and maintaining ties to far-right ethnonationalist movements
- AfD's state manifesto calls for banning Pride flags in schools, creating separate classrooms for refugee children, revising history curricula, and defining a "healthy family" as father, mother and children
- AfD national polling stands at 28% per Infratest-Dimap and the party won the second-highest number of seats in Germany's 2025 federal election after pivoting from its 2013 anti-Euro origins to a migration-focused platform in 2015
- Germany's mainstream parties refuse to cooperate with extremist parties under a "firewall" strategy, but at 42% support other parties may lack the seats to form a governing coalition without AfD
- AfD lawmakers have reportedly visited and praised Russia, and the Saxony-Anhalt manifesto states a "strong interest in good relations with Russia both economically and culturally" — a concern as AfD could also gain control over state-level domestic intelligence services
Why it matters: Germany's 'firewall' strategy keeps extremist parties out of government, but AfD's 42% lead in Saxony-Anhalt may leave other parties without enough seats to govern alone — handing the far right control of education, policing, cultural policy and state-level intelligence oversight for the first time since WWII.
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