In the two free states of East Germany, Thuringia and Saxony, around 6 million voters are called to elect new state parliaments. The elections could shake up the political landscape in Germany.
The far-right populist party Alternative for Germany could become the strongest party in a state election for the first time. The Sahra Wagenknecht alliance hopes to change the image after the federal government sank into deep unpopularity following her tenure.
Germany’s largest bourgeois opposition party hopes to keep Alternative for Germany in check in Saxony and Thuringia. But the prospects for the three parties in the coalition chancellor Olaf Scholz They are not good. Your constants Infighting has contributed to stagnation of the economy and other problems and have alienated voters.
The victories of Alternative for Germany (AfD) would be a strong signal for the party almost a year before the next federal elections. But you will most likely need a coalition partner to govern and it is very unlikely that anyone will work with her. However, her strength could make it extremely difficult to form new state governments.
Problems in Berlin after a paradigm shift
The high approval ratings of the AfD and the new Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, both strongest in Germany’s former communist east, were partly boosted by dissatisfaction with the federal government. Scholz’s alliance fought throughout the campaign to the European elections in June and obtained terrible results. Internal hostilities have intensified during a summer marked by disagreements over the 2025 budget.
Scholz’s Social Democrats the green ones y the pro-business free democrats were weak from the start in these two states, even though the first two parties are the junior partners in both outgoing state governments. Now are at risk of falling below the 5% required to remain in state parliaments.
Scholz recently stated that “the gunpowder vapor of the battlefield” sometimes obscures achievements. The Minister of Justice, Marco Buschmann, stated that The Government is not a “self-help group”. One of the federal presidents of Los Verdes, Omid. Nouripour described the coalition as a “transitional government.”
The already established opposition party CDU has won the European elections. He has governed Saxony since German reunification in 1990 and hopes that thanks to Prime Minister Michael Kretschmer he can once again overtake the AfD, as he did five years ago. In Thuringia, polls show it is behind the AfDbut hopes to form a government coalition.
Thuringia’s politics are particularly complicated because Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow’s Left Party has lost national importance. Wagenknecht, long one of its best-known figures, left the party last year to form a new party that is now well ahead of the left.
Migration, war and peace as champions of the extreme right
The AfD has exploited the high anti-immigration sentiment in the region. An election poster in Thuringia promises “summer, sun, return migration” and shows a plane with the “Deportation-Hansa” logo.
AfD leader Alice Weidelattacked both the ruling parties and the CDU, which previously governed Germany under Angela Merkel, for their “policy of uncontrolled mass immigration” after a knife attack in Solingen last week in which a suspected extremist from Syria killed three people.
Wagenknecht’s new party combines left-wing economic policy with a skeptical immigration agenda. The CDU has also increased pressure on the federal government to take a tougher stance on migration issue.
Germany’s attitude towards Russia’s war in Ukraine It’s also a problem in these eastern states. Berlin is Ukraine’s second largest arms supplier after the United States; These arms shipments are rejected by both the AfD and the BSW. An AfD poster with a combination of German and Russian flags proclaims: “Peace is everything!”
Wagenknecht also attacked a recent decision by the German government and the United States to begin deploying new medium-range missiles in Germany starting in 2026. He has said that his party will only join state governments that have a “clear position in favor of diplomacy and against war preparations“.
Will there be a coalition between parties?
The AfD won its first mayoral and district council positions last yearbut is not yet represented in any state government. In June, Federal President Tino Chrupalla said that “the sun of government responsibility must rise for us in the east.”
This is not the case in Saxony and Thuringia, since no other party wants to form a coalition with them. The Office for the Protection of the Constitution officially supervises the AfD state associations in both federal states as “declared far-right” groups. Their leader in Thuringia, Björn Höcke was convicted of deliberately using the Nazi slogan “Everything for Germany” in political events, but has filed an appeal.
ADVERTISINGDepending on the poor performance of the ruling parties at the federal level, CDU could look for unlikely coalition partners. The party has long refused to work with Ramelow’s Left Party, which emerged from the East German communist party, the SED, but has not ruled out working with Wagenknecht’s BSW. CDU federal president Friedrich Merz told the RND newspaper group that “we cannot work with” the AfD: “That would kill the CDU”.
