Saxony-Anhalt votes on Sunday. Polling for public broadcaster ZDF puts Alternative für Deutschland on 41 per cent, against 23 for the governing Christian Democrats, 11.5 for the Left, 8.5 for the Social Democrats and 6 for the Greens.

At the last election in 2021, the CDU took 37.1 per cent and the AfD 20.8. If the polling holds, the two will have almost exactly swapped.

The arithmetic that decides Sunday

The interesting number is not 41 per cent. It is how many parties clear five.

German electoral law excludes parties below a five per cent threshold from parliament. Their votes are not transferred; they simply do not convert into seats, and the seats are distributed among the parties that did clear it. A party on 41 per cent of votes therefore takes a considerably larger share of seats if a fifth of all votes go to parties that fall short.

Several parties are close to that line. The Free Democrats, currently in government in Magdeburg, are polling near three per cent. The Greens are just above five. The Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht is around four.

So the AfD could fall well short of a majority of votes and still approach a majority of seats — or not, depending on whether the Greens and others survive. That is why initiatives in the state have been urging tactical voting to lift smaller parties over the threshold: not to elect them, but to deny seats to the largest party.

The firewall, and what it actually is

Even a first-place finish is not expected to produce an AfD government, because of an arrangement German politics calls the Brandmauer — the firewall. It is not a law. It is an undertaking by the other parties not to enter coalition with, or accept the votes of, the AfD.

The case for it is that a party classified by the state’s own domestic intelligence agency as confirmed right-wing extremist should not be given executive power, and that Germany’s constitutional order is explicitly designed to defend itself rather than remain neutral between all comers.

The case against, made by the AfD and by some outside it, is that excluding the largest party from government tells its voters their votes cannot produce a government, which is the grievance the party runs on. Senior figures have also advocated an outright ban, which sharpens the same objection.

Both arguments have been made in Germany for a decade without resolution, and Sunday will not resolve them either. What it may do is make the practical cost of the firewall visible: if the AfD takes something close to half the seats, a governing coalition of everyone else becomes arithmetically difficult and ideologically incoherent.

The week it lands in

The vote comes days after Berlin formally attributed the attempted drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport to Russia, closed a Russian consulate and raised the national threat level — as we reported yesterday. Leipzig is in neighbouring Saxony, and the AfD favours closer relations with Moscow.

President Putin has said the German government is using the incident to distract from domestic difficulties. There is no evidence the attribution was timed to the election, and a month-long investigation concludes when it concludes. But the sequence is the sequence, and readers can weigh it.

What the campaign has actually turned on locally is more ordinary: migration, economic decline in parts of the state, and the sense in eastern Germany that decisions are made elsewhere.

Two more votes follow

Saxony-Anhalt is the first of three. Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern both vote on 20 September.

That sequence matters for how Sunday should be read. A strong AfD result in one eastern state is a state result. The same result in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern two weeks later, alongside whatever Berlin produces, becomes a national picture — and the federal coalition will have to respond to the pattern rather than the instance.

What to watch on the night

Not the AfD’s percentage. The Greens’ and the FDP’s — because those two numbers, more than the headline, determine whether the largest party ends up short of a majority or next to one.

Sources

• Forschungsgruppe Wahlen poll for ZDF, published 3 September 2026
• PolitPro aggregated polling average, 3 September 2026
• Official results of the 2021 Saxony-Anhalt state election
• Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt composition data