On Sunday, the anti-immigration hard-right nationalist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) secured a historic breakthrough victory in regional elections in Germany’s eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, sending immediate political tremors across Berlin, Brussels, and beyond. Political analysts and major media outlets have already framed the outcome as a seismic shift, a socio-political earthquake, and a defining watershed moment for modern German politics — a description that, despite the state’s small geographic and demographic size, proves anything but exaggerated.
Saxony-Anhalt, one of Germany’s 16 federal states, counts only 1.7 million eligible voters out of the country’s total 59 million, and the AfD fell just short of an outright parliamentary majority. Still, the implications of the result stretch far beyond this small, economically struggling eastern region, touching every level of German and European politics.
Domestically, the landslide result amplifies pressure on Germany’s already embattled centrist federal coalition in Berlin, and may well spell the political end for unpopular conservative Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who staked his political credibility on curbing the AfD’s growing support. This domestic political upheaval comes at a particularly precarious moment for the European Union, as the bloc confronts Russian military aggression in Ukraine, aggressive trade pressure from former U.S. President Donald Trump, and growing economic competition from China — and as Germany, the EU’s largest and most economically powerful member, finds itself increasingly weakened and distracted by internal strife.
Most notably, the result marks the first major electoral landslide for a hard-right nationalist party in Germany since the collapse of the Third Reich in 1945, forcing a national reckoning with a country’s still-lingering legacy of Nazi extremism. German federal authorities have already formally classified parts of the AfD as anti-democratic, and the Saxony-Anhalt regional faction is explicitly labeled a far-right extremist extremist group. Long a dominant political force in eastern Germany, the AfD now stands as the most popular political party in national polling, a clear sign that Germany’s traditional mainstream political establishment has failed to address voter grievances.
The shockwaves of the Saxony-Anhalt result have already reached across international borders. Within hours of exit polls being published, former U.S. President Donald Trump shared the result on his Truth Social platform, aligning the AfD’s nationalist, anti-immigration, “Germany for Germans” platform with his own “Make America Great Again” movement. Like many other European nationalist parties, the AfD has adopted core elements of Trump’s political playbook: attacking the credibility of mainstream media, questioning judicial neutrality, and promising to “make Germany great again.”
Shortly after Trump’s post, Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and a close ally of Vladimir Putin, hailed the outcome as “historic,” dismissing Germany’s sitting national government as “discredited” and Chancellor Merz as “humiliated.” Dmitriev’s comments are no coincidence: Germany is the largest single military donor to Ukraine, and the AfD has openly pushed to end Western military aid to Kyiv, lift sanctions on Russia, and resume imports of cheap Russian energy — a policy that holds particular appeal for energy-hungry German industrial firms that suffered massive economic losses after Russia cut energy exports following the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. For voters in Saxony-Anhalt, Germany’s poorest region which still lags far behind western German states despite trillions of euros in integration spending since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the AfD’s pro-Russia stance and appeals to “Ostalgie” — nostalgia for the relative stability of communist East Germany — have resonated deeply.
Across the European Union, the result has sparked widespread alarm, as the bloc prepares for a year of critical national elections across key member states including France, Italy, Spain, and Poland. EU leaders fear that the AfD’s victory will embolden far-right nationalist parties across the continent, a concern echoed by political actors on both sides of the debate. Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s nationalist Vox party, hailed the outcome as “a great hope for Germany and for Europe,” while French Europe Minister Benjamin Haddad, a close ally of centrist President Emmanuel Macron, warned that “this is a serious moment in Europe, seeing the far right win in a regional election in Germany.”
While far-right parties across Europe differ in tone and policy — Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France expelled the AfD from its European Parliament grouping two years ago for being overly radical — they share core anti-immigration and nationalist policy platforms that directly challenge the EU’s founding principles of cross-border unity and integration. Brussels fears that the rise of Eurosceptic nationalist parties will fracture European cohesion at a moment when unified action is more critical than ever, from countering Trump’s trade threats to checking China’s economic expansion to maintaining unified sanctions against Russia.
European defense officials warn that softening stances on sanctions against Russia and wavering support for NATO collective defense — positions held by the AfD and many other European nationalist parties — only embolden Moscow, increasing the risk that the Kremlin could eventually launch attacks on NATO Baltic member states if left unchecked.
At its core, the Saxony-Anhalt result is a stark warning to Europe’s traditional mainstream political parties and establishment institutions, which the AfD dismisses as a self-interested elite disconnected from ordinary voters. Across the continent, millions of voters report feeling let down by decades of leadership from traditional parties, grappling with growing anxieties over economic insecurity, crumbling public services, uncontrolled immigration, street safety, and the spillover effects of ongoing wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. The growing willingness of voters to support the AfD, which has never held national governing power and ran on the upbeat slogan “Anything is Possible” paired with a promise to restore national pride, does not mean they have all embraced extremism — it means they are ready to try something new.