The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has won a decisive victory in Germany’s eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, far ahead of mainstream rivals.
But preliminary results show it has fallen short of an outright majority needed to govern alone, with 43.8% of the vote to the conservative CDU’s 17.2%, and tricky negotiations on who will run the state lie ahead.
AfD’s charismatic leader in the state, Ulrich Siegmund, said it was “sensational” and the party had won a mandate to govern.
No far-right party has controlled a German state since World War Two, and governing at state level would mean powers over policing, local education and culture.
Saxony-Anhalt has a small population of 2.1 million and the AfD in the state is assessed by domestic intelligence as “right-wing extremist”, a classification rejected by Siegmund, 35.
