The Alternative for Germany (AfD) secured a sweeping victory in the regional elections in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, triggering serious concern across both the domestic and international political landscape.

The AfD’s electoral success is piling pressure on Berlin’s centrist governing coalition and weakening Germany’s position at a time when Europe is facing multiple crises.

Moscow is watching developments with interest, given that the AfD backs an end to military aid for Ukraine and the lifting of sanctions on Russia.

The European Union has voiced concern over the rise of extreme political forces, fearing the trend could damage European cohesion at a critical juncture.

The BBC sets out to map the fallout, and the ripples it is sending through the global political stage. The analysis, which touches on Germany, the United States, Russia, the war in Ukraine and the European Union, opens with the labels political analysts have reached for to describe the result in one of Germany’s smaller states: a “seismic event”, a “socio-political earthquake”, a “turning point for Germany”.

Saxony-Anhalt has just 1.7 million eligible voters out of the 59 million entitled to vote nationally in Germany, but as the BBC points out, the political trends on display there carry “very significant implications, not least because the AfD fell short of an outright majority”.

“First and foremost for Germany itself. The vote was regional, but its consequences reach all the way to the national stage. The AfD’s sweeping win piles yet more pressure on Berlin’s already beleaguered centrist governing coalition. It could even prove the final blow for the deeply unpopular conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz, who had promised to curb the AfD’s reach,” the British outlet’s analysis continues.

As it notes, “these political difficulties are expected to further weaken and distract Germany, the European Union’s most powerful player, at a time when Europe is grappling with multiple crises: the effort to check Russian aggression, Donald Trump’s tariffs, and the economic challenge posed by China.”

The result in Saxony-Anhalt has also caused deep unease across Germany as a whole, where the Nazi past still weighs on the collective memory. This marks the first such striking electoral win for a hard-right nationalist party with a genuine prospect of exercising power, even at regional level, since the fall of the Third Reich in 1945.

On the AfD specifically, the analysis notes that “it is known to have a particularly strong base in eastern Germany, but it now appears in national polling as the country’s largest political party,” adding that “Germany’s traditional political system appears to have failed to meet the expectations of many voters.”

Beyond Germany

Little Saxony-Anhalt is also sending shockwaves beyond Germany’s borders, the BBC’s analysis continues, pointing to US President Donald Trump’s post reacting to the exit poll results.

“The AfD’s anti-immigration, anti-woke message, under the slogan ‘Germany for the Germans’, bears striking similarities to the political narrative of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. Like other nationalist parties in Europe, the AfD has adopted elements of the Trump playbook, challenging the traditional media and judicial neutrality while promising to ‘make Germany great again’,” the analysis’s author observes, though she also notes that “the US president’s name is rarely invoked in European election campaigns, as politicians are well aware of how unpopular he remains among many European voters.”

At the same time, Moscow is following political developments in Germany closely, given that Berlin is the single largest donor of military aid to Ukraine. The AfD, by contrast, supports an end to military aid for Kyiv, the lifting of sanctions on Russia, and a resumption of cheap Russian energy imports.

The role of eastern Germany

The AfD’s softer stance towards Russia also resonates in eastern Germany, which remains economically weaker than the west despite the vast sums spent on reunification since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the British outlet notes.

As it observes, “Saxony-Anhalt remains Germany’s poorest region, and it is there that one often encounters the phenomenon known as Ostalgie, a nostalgia some residents feel for the everyday stability they associate with the East German era.”

Europe

The European Union, too, is watching developments closely. The next twelve months are seen as a period of intense electoral contests, with crucial votes due in countries including France, Italy, Spain and Poland.

In Brussels, there is concern that more parties regarded as politically extreme, chiefly from the right of the spectrum, could gain further ground.

Telling was the comment from Santiago Abascal, leader of Spain’s nationalist Vox party, who called the AfD’s win “great hope for Germany and for Europe”. France’s Minister for European Affairs, Benjamin Haddad, struck a very different note, warning that “this is a serious moment for Europe, as we watch the far right win regional elections in Germany.”

The AfD, like other parties labelled “hard” or “far” right, rejects these characterisations. Although such parties differ from one another on many issues, they typically share two defining traits: a hard line on immigration and strongly nationalist rhetoric. Their rise is a source of concern for the EU, amid fears it could undermine European cohesion at a time of international strain. Many European voters, meanwhile, are anxious about the fallout from the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the deterioration of public health services, economic insecurity, and immigration and street safety.

“And this is precisely where the significance of the Saxony-Anhalt vote lies: it stands as a loud warning to mainstream political parties and institutions alike. Many voters feel abandoned by the parties they backed for decades. The fact that they are now looking for alternatives, whether from the right or the left, does not necessarily mean they have embraced extreme ideologies. The AfD’s campaign slogan in Saxony-Anhalt was the upbeat ‘Anything is possible!’, paired with a promise to make Germans feel proud of their country again. And it seems an increasing number of voters are willing to give it the chance to prove that in practice,” the BBC’s analysis concludes.