This Sunday’s state election in Saxony-Anhalt – a federal state of just over two million in eastern Germany – is of enormous significance. For the first time, the right-populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) could win an election so decisively that no alternative coalition could be formed to exclude it. Recent polls have consistently given the AfD more than 40 per cent of the vote – almost double that of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which is currently the biggest party in Saxony-Anhalt’s governing coalition. If these polls are accurate, not even a ‘firewall’ of anti-AfD parties governing together can keep it from winning political power.
The threat to German democracy does not come from the AfD
