Saxony-Anhalt is one of Germany’s smallest states, home to just over two million people, with limited economic weight compared with the country’s major industrial centres, and for decades it stayed far from the centre of political developments in Berlin.

Today, however, the ballot in this eastern German state could trigger a political earthquake with consequences reaching well beyond its borders. The latest polls place the Alternative for Germany (AfD) clearly in first place, turning into a real possibility something that would have seemed unthinkable only a few years ago: the formation of the first ever state government led by the AfD.

If this is confirmed once the polls close and the AfD does manage to form a government, the significance will not lie simply in the party’s vote share, nor in the fact that it will have won yet another electoral contest in eastern Germany. For the first time, it will move from protest to administration. It will gain ministers, a state apparatus, a budget, and powers over policing, education and public administration, and, crucially, the chance to show German voters how it governs. That is the real stake in today’s contest in Saxony-Anhalt.

The first crack in Germany’s “firewall”

Germany’s post-war political system has rested for decades on a rule that was never written into the constitution but functioned almost as though it were: parties considered to sit at the fringes of the political system could be elected, enter parliament, even win high vote shares, but stayed outside government power. In the AfD’s case, this took the form of the so-called Brandmauer, the “firewall” that the country’s other major parties have erected against it. The Christian Democrats, the Social Democrats, the Greens and the Left party may disagree on almost everything, but to this day they agree on one point: none of them will form a government with the AfD.

Should the AfD win the seats it needs to govern alone, that firewall will be bypassed in practice without any other party needing to tear it down. From that moment, the debate in Germany will change character. The question will no longer be whether the AfD can govern, but whether it governs effectively.

This shift would be far more dangerous for the traditional parties than another electoral first place. Until now they have been able to present the AfD as a protest force with no experience and no proven governing capacity. A state government would give it the chance, for the first time, to answer that charge with a record in office.

What could actually change

Germany’s federal structure gives its states significant powers. An AfD government in Magdeburg would not be able to decide German foreign policy, change Berlin’s stance on Ukraine or lift sanctions on Russia. Nor would it be able to unpick federal asylum or immigration law on its own. It would, however, be able to directly influence how much of that policy is applied within the state itself. Immigration offices, the police, deportation procedures, integration programmes, social policy, funding for various bodies and the relationship between the regional government and municipalities all run, to a significant degree, through the state’s own structures.

This is where the gap between the AfD’s rhetoric and its actual capacity to govern would become clear for the first time. The party would likely try to make full use of the powers available to it: stricter enforcement of deportation procedures, cuts to funding for integration programmes, changes to social benefits and different priorities on public order.

The bigger test, though, would come in education and culture. German states have far greater room for manoeuvre there. A regional government can shape school curricula, the teaching of history, policy around national identity, funding for cultural organisations, and the state’s relationship with bodies the AfD regards as ideologically hostile. For a party that has invested politically in the fight over German identity, immigration and historical memory, these powers are anything but secondary.

🇩🇪 Alice Weidel has said that open borders, the shutdown of nuclear power, and welfare payments for “clan members” and “fraudsters” is the real political extremism in Germany.

Speaking as Saxony-Anhalt votes in their state election, she said the AfD would pursue “sensible,…

— Europa.com (@europa) September 6, 2026

The problem would start with the security services

The most immediate clash, however, could begin in a far more sensitive area: the security services.

The government of a German state is responsible for local policing and takes part in a dense network of intelligence sharing with the federal authorities and the other states. If the AfD were to take over Saxony-Anhalt’s interior ministry, Berlin would face an unprecedented problem: how much sensitive information could it share with a government that includes officials from a party under close surveillance by Germany’s own security services, and which has for years faced accusations of unusually close ties to Russia?

The question carries even more weight given the current climate. Germany now treats Russia as the principal threat to European security, is rearming, is strengthening its presence on NATO’s eastern flank and has accused Moscow of a series of hybrid actions across Europe. The AfD is moving in the opposite direction, calling for a normalisation of relations with Russia, questioning the strategy of supporting Ukraine, and repeatedly opposing sanctions policy. An AfD government could not change Berlin’s overall strategy. But it could create an unprecedented situation in which the federal state would have to decide whether it fully trusts one of its own regional governments.

Four votes in the Bundesrat

Saxony-Anhalt does not only have a government and a regional parliament. Like all German states, it also sits in the Bundesrat, the upper chamber of the federal parliament through which state governments take part in federal lawmaking. Saxony-Anhalt holds four of the Bundesrat’s 69 votes, not enough to block Berlin’s legislation on its own, let alone change Germany’s course. The political precedent, however, would matter.

For the first time, the AfD would take part not as a parliamentary opposition but as a state government within one of the core institutions of the federal system. Its ministers would sit at the same table as the other state governments and take part in decisions ranging from the economy and immigration to Germany’s position on European legislation. The AfD, in other words, would stop being purely outside the system it denounces. It would become part of it.

The big gamble: what happens if the AfD simply governs

This may be the most important point for what comes next. The greatest threat to the traditional parties is not necessarily a dramatic clash between the AfD and the country’s institutions. It could be exactly the opposite. What happens if, for two or three years, the Saxony-Anhalt government operates without institutional chaos? If the civil service keeps functioning, if the budget is executed, if the roads, schools and hospitals keep running, and if, at the same time, the AfD manages to show its voters concrete changes on immigration, security or education?

In that case, the state would turn into a political showcase. The argument that the AfD can protest but cannot govern would have taken a serious hit, and the party would have plenty of political time ahead to present Saxony-Anhalt as proof that it can take on greater responsibility too. There is, of course, the reverse scenario. A government that clashes constantly with the courts, becomes politically isolated, drives away investment or fails at day-to-day management could turn the AfD’s first experiment in government into the strongest argument against it. That is why the real battle will not be decided solely by tonight’s result. If the AfD does take power, then the far harder test will begin.

From Saxony-Anhalt to France

The significance of today’s vote goes beyond Germany because it coincides with a very specific moment for Europe.

In a few months, France will enter the final stretch before the 2027 presidential election, and the current polling picture looks different from that of previous contests. National Rally leader Marine Le Pen no longer appears simply as the likely winner of the first round. The latest polls suggest she now has a real chance of winning the second round too. A survey by the polling firm Ipsos, carried out between 31 August and 2 September, puts Le Pen at 34 to 36% in the first round, depending on the scenario of candidacies. Former Prime Minister and Horizons party leader Édouard Philippe, currently the strongest candidate from the centre, trails noticeably lower, with an even wider gap to her other likely rivals. The picture in the second round is even more striking. Pollster Elabe put Le Pen at 52.5% against Philippe, 57% against former Prime Minister and Renaissance leader Gabriel Attal, and 57% against French MEP Raphaël Glucksmann. Ifop-Fiducial also had her winning every second-round scenario it tested: 52-48% against Philippe, 54-46% against Attal and 55-45% against Glucksmann. Harris Interactive/Toluna recorded an even bigger gap, putting her ahead 55-45% against Philippe.

This is what sets 2027 apart from 2002, 2017 and 2022. For two decades, France’s far right could reach the second round but there would run into an almost automatic “republican front” of voters from across the political spectrum uniting to keep it out of the Élysée Palace. Today’s polls suggest that mechanism no longer works with the same force.

Why a governing precedent in Germany would matter for Paris

The AfD and the National Rally are not the same party.

They have different origins, different strategies, and have even clashed within Europe’s far right. Marine Le Pen has spent years trying to present her party as one that has moved away from its more extreme positions of the past, while the AfD has in several instances moved in the opposite direction. But if the AfD does cross the threshold into government in a German state today, the political precedent will carry particular weight. It will have demolished another argument used by traditional parties across Europe: that such political movements may gather votes but remain outside real power.

Germany carries distinct symbolic weight precisely because of its history. Its post-war political system was designed with an almost obsessive focus on safeguards, the dispersal of power and preventing political extremes from returning to government. If the AfD breaks that barrier, even in a small state of the former East Germany, the image will travel far beyond Magdeburg. In France, the message will be clear: the shift from political isolation to power is no longer a theoretical scenario. It will already have happened in the other major power of the European Union.

The Franco-German axis in uncharted territory

This is the real stake for Europe. The European Union has weathered debt crises, Brexit, a pandemic, war in Ukraine, an energy crisis and the deepest confrontation with Russia since the Cold War. Through all of these crises, however different the governments in Berlin and Paris may have been, the basic orientation of the two countries stayed within a shared European framework. 2027 could leave Europe facing an entirely different reality. If today’s result in Saxony-Anhalt leads to an AfD government, Germany will have, for the first time, a genuine governing laboratory for the party, at the same time as the AfD continues to vie for first place nationally. And in France, the National Rally would be seeking not just a stronger presence in the National Assembly but the Élysée Palace itself.

Even without parties from this part of the spectrum governing in both countries at once, the pressure they exert alone could shift Europe’s agenda. Immigration, asylum, the Green Deal, relations with Russia, Ukraine, common European defence, enlargement and the transfer of further powers to Brussels would all become even harder ground for compromise. And if, at some point, this political shift reaches the top of both Germany and France at the same time, it would no longer be a question of shifting balances within the European Union. It would be a change to its political centre itself.

Why Saxony-Anhalt matters more than its size suggests

That is why today’s contest in Saxony-Anhalt is not only about one state of the former East Germany. It is about whether the AfD will, for the first time, get the chance to prove it can wield power. It is about whether the “firewall” that has kept the party out of government will remain politically effective once there is a real precedent for it in office. It is about how Berlin will react if AfD ministers gain access to the machinery of state, the security services and the Bundesrat.

Above all, though, it is about the message Germany will send to the rest of Europe if today’s vote gives the AfD what it has never had before: real governing power. Because a few months later, the same question, on a far bigger scale, will be put to France. And there, it will not be the government of a state of two million people being decided. It will be the presidency itself.

🚨HOLY SMOKES! 🇩🇪 GERMANY's “AfD”ALICE WEIDEL ANNOUNCES THE ABOLITION OF THE EU ONCE THEY WIN THE UPCOMING ELECTION:

"We will LEAVE the European Union. We don’t need the EU. We will send back ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS, and increase BORDER SECURITY." pic.twitter.com/81ELnscEq6

— JackTheRippler ©️ (@RippleXrpie) September 6, 2026