Over the 13 years since its founding, Germany’s far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) has evolved from a fringe political movement to a major national force — yet it has never held a seat in any state or federal governing coalition. This exclusion has been sustained by what political observers call a long-standing “firewall”: a cross-ideological agreement among all mainstream German parties to reject any formal or informal cooperation with the party.
Now, that unbroken policy faces its most severe challenge. In Sunday’s regional election in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt, AfD secured a resounding landslide victory, taking 43.8% of the vote — more than double its share from the state’s previous election five years ago. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), by contrast, lost roughly half of its voter support in the race.
The refusal to cooperate with AfD stems from more than just ideological divides. Germany’s domestic intelligence agency classifies AfD as an extremist extremist in multiple regions, including Saxony-Anhalt itself. For German society, deeply shaped by its reckoning with the horrors of the Nazi dictatorship, any mainstream collaboration with a far-right nationalist party carries unique historical sensitivity. For decades, most Germans held the conviction that post-war education, legal safeguards against persecution, and public reckoning with the past had built permanent national immunity to racist nationalism. Recent electoral shifts have upended that belief: across Germany, mirroring far-right gains across Europe, voters are increasingly turning to the AfD, which has repeatedly rejected accusations of anti-democratic and anti-constitutional views.
This is not the first time regional politics have forced mainstream parties to contort themselves to keep AfD out of power. Two years ago, when AfD became the largest party in the neighboring eastern state of Thuringia, mainstream parties spanning left, center and right formed an ideologically fractured three-party coalition just to maintain the firewall. The pattern repeated at the national level last year, when AfD posted the best result for a far-right party since World War II, rising to become the largest opposition bloc in federal parliament. Merz, whose CDU led government formation, upheld the anti-cooperation firewall by forming an unpopular grand coalition with the center-left Social Democrats, keeping AfD out of national power.
But the scale of the Saxony-Anhalt win has left the future of the firewall in doubt. AfD’s lead candidate for state governor, Ulrich Siegmund, has positioned himself to become the first far-right head of a regional German government since 1945. He has already announced plans to reach out to all parties and individual lawmakers in the new state parliament to build a governing majority, and has ruled out leading a minority AfD government.
The small hard-left BSW party, which won 5.3% of the vote, has emerged as the potential kingmaker. AfD and BSW share key policy priorities: both take a Russia-friendly diplomatic stance and oppose mass immigration, even as they disagree on many other domestic issues. On Monday, BSW’s lead Saxony-Anhalt candidate Thomas Schulze openly confirmed his party’s willingness to support an AfD-led government in the state parliament, opening a path for the far right to take power.
A governing coalition that excludes AfD would require the cooperation of five separate parties: the CDU, Social Democrats, Greens, Left Party, and BSW. Political analysts widely agree that such a broad, ideologically fragmented five-party coalition would be unprecedented in German regional politics, exceedingly difficult to negotiate, and highly vulnerable to collapse once in power. There is also a persistent wild card: if just three sitting lawmakers from other parties defect to AfD, the party would immediately secure a governing majority on its own.
While top CDU officials reiterated the party’s commitment to the firewall immediately after Sunday’s result, other regional actors have signaled openness to breaking the long-standing taboo. Political analyst Volker Resing told the Associated Press that AfD’s strong showing, paired with BSW’s willingness to negotiate, could finally break through the decades-old barrier. “This tiny party could now play a decisive role in determining the future of Saxony-Anhalt,” Resing noted, adding that it remains uncertain whether shared policy positions on Russia and immigration will be enough to overcome decades of political convention and deliver Germany its first post-WWII far-right state government.