State election | International press reviews on the election in Saxony-Anhalt

A voter throws her ballot into a ballot box at a polling station in Wernigerode. Photo: Matthias Bein/dpa Magdeburg.  The AfD wins the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt by a large margin, but misses an absolute majority. The strong performance of the party, which is classified as right-wing extremist in the state, is causing a great response beyond Germany. Many major international media outlets are making the election results their top story.

»Corriere della Sera«: »Just as one cannot push back a wave and cannot put a broken vessel back together without the cracks remaining visible, so Germany can no longer return to what it was before after the election in Saxony-Anhalt. The AfD’s triumph is of historic proportions, even if it does not come into government.”

»La Repubblica«: »Germany wrote a new page in its history yesterday, and it is a worrying page. In a small federal state, Saxony-Anhalt, where three percent of the German population lives, an overwhelming majority of voters betrayed the promise of “never again.” 

»La Stampa«: »81 years after Hitler's downfall, which left the country in ruins and with the indelible guilt of the Holocaust, a party that more or less explicitly refers to that Germany wins the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt.«

»Tages-Anzeiger«: »State elections often reflect the mood towards the federal government. The result is also a judgment about the black-red coalition in Berlin - and a bad one for Chancellor Friedrich Merz. He always talked about wanting to remove the AfD. Now the partly right-wing extremist party in Saxony-Anhalt is confirming its upward trend.

»Neuen Zürcher Zeitung«: »The CDU's worst nightmare has come true: the voters have halved the party. She achieved the worst result in her history in the state and also lost the election with the AfD to a party to her right. If the former CSU leader Franz-Josef Strauss were still alive, who once said that there should be no democratically legitimate party besides the Union at this point, he would be horrified.

News magazine “Polityka”: “After the election on Sunday, the new state government must be in place within 30 days – that’s what German law wants. This means that next month Germany expects a festival of political declarations without covering costs, a festival of attacks on Merz as well as debates about early federal elections and the possible breakup of the federal government. If you take into account the weakening economy, the model of German industry that is crumbling before the eyes of the world and growing unemployment, then it is not impossible that we are all on the threshold of a gigantic German crisis that will undoubtedly spread across the entire continent.

»El País«: »Everything that once stood is crumbling, and many of the instruments that once served to contain the extreme right have proven to be useless or even counterproductive. The AfD's overwhelming victory in the small eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt will force the democratic camp to rethink its strategies of the past few years and to reassess some truths that were previously considered irrefutable.

»Wall Street Journal«: »The signal is clear, even if the calculated majority may not give the AfD a majority capable of acting in the state government. Voters are tired of established parties. This frustration stems primarily from the liberal immigration policy that Berlin has pursued for a decade since 2015, and which is proving difficult to reverse.”

»Independent«: »(…) This victory is the greatest success in the 13-year history of the AfD and comes at a time of widespread dissatisfaction with an unpopular federal government that has so far failed to convince voters that it can get the country's weakening economy back on track. “The victory is also a symbolic setback for (Chancellor Friedrich) Merz, whose center-right party has ruled Saxony-Anhalt for 24 years.”

International political celebrities also spoke up. US President Donald Trump distributed an image of an projection as of 7:57 p.m. (German time) on his Truth Social platform. Trump left the bar graph showing the AfD's victory alone and did not comment further on it.

“A huge (election) night for Germany and Europe!” wrote the elected Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán about the AfD’s election victory in Saxony-Anhalt. He also said on X: “Congratulations to Alice Weidel, Ulrich Siegmund and the entire AfD for their landslide victory in Saxony-Anhalt. Hold on tight! This is just the beginning.”

The Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, however, was stunned. “In Poland, only idiots or traitors can enjoy the AfD’s triumph in Germany,” the liberal-conservative politician wrote on election night at X. dpa/nd

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