Germany's triumphant far-right AfD aims fire at Merz

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservatives licked their wounds Monday after a crushing state election defeat in the ex-communist east, as the triumphant far-right AfD launched a withering attack against him. The result in Saxony-Anhalt has intensified pressure on Merz's coalition at a time of economic stagnation.

Why did the AfD win in Saxony-Anhalt?

The AfD won nearly 44 percent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, a landslide widely blamed on voter anger against the ruling coalition amid economic stagnation. Merz's Christian Democrats scored just 17 percent under defeated state premier Sven Schulze, marking the party's worst result in the state and deepening doubts over Merz's national leadership.

AfD national co-leader Alice Weidel, basking in the result, charged that "no chancellor before has been as unpopular as Friedrich Merz, who has become a major burden on Germany's prosperous development." The party's 35-year-old lead candidate in the state, Ulrich Siegmund, said voters had sent "a signal to Berlin," calling Merz "a very good campaigner" for the AfD.

What has the AfD said about forming a government?

Siegmund said his party had narrowly missed an absolute majority but was now reaching out to other parties and individual MPs to build a stable ruling coalition. "It is a very clear government mandate," he said. "It could hardly be clearer." The prospect of the first far-right government taking charge of a German state since World War II has unsettled other parties, migrants and minority groups.

The AfD in Saxony-Anhalt is labelled a "right-wing extremist" group by Germany's domestic intelligence agency, and some of Siegmund's staff are former members of a since-banned neo-Nazi organization. The AfD's success was also celebrated abroad: US tech billionaire Elon Musk posted the German message "Gut gemacht," or well done, on X.

How are migrants in Germany reacting to the AfD's rise?

A 28-year-old man from Afghanistan, who came to Germany in 2015 and asked not to be named, said he was scared for his future in the country. "I have two children here," he told AFP in the Saxony-Anhalt state capital of Magdeburg. "What will happen if I have to leave?"

AfD national co-leader Tino Chrupalla sought to dispel such fears, telling Deutschlandfunk radio that "no one needs to be afraid of us." He said his party is not against people with a migrant background, "provided they are integrated, speak German and contribute to the economy here." Weidel struck a more combative tone at a Berlin press conference, predicting her party will take power in the 2029 national elections and demanding an end to "illegal migration, open borders, skyrocketing rates of crime committed by foreign nationals, and a refusal to carry out deportations." She also criticized Germany's "disastrous energy policy" and what she called "rampant deindustrialization that is breaking Germany's backbone."

What pressure does Merz face after the election?

Pressure on Merz is growing not only from the far-right but also from within his own coalition, which has struggled to revive a stagnant economy and clashed over social policy, including pensions. A visibly dejected Schulze said Sunday that national government policies had not always helped his campaign, adding, "we often faced headwinds, and that wasn't always easy."

Daniel Guenther, the CDU premier of Schleswig-Holstein, called the AfD's win "a shocking moment for our country," noting that a party whose state branch is classified as right-wing extremist came close to an absolute majority for the first time since World War II. The AfD, founded in 2013 as a eurosceptic protest party, later transformed into an anti-immigration movement that built its platform on opposition to former CDU chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door policy.

Merz has vowed to return the CDU to its conservative roots and has launched a crackdown on irregular immigration while trying to turn around the economy. Political scientist Oliver Lembcke of Ruhr University Bochum said the result signals "a tectonic shift in the party system," noting that the AfD has grown stronger despite the CDU's more conservative course, leaving Merz facing renewed urgency over what strategy the CDU can use to reverse the trend.