One day after the blow to Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Saxony-Anhalt elections, Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday that “we are all deeply shocked” by the far-right party’s victory, acknowledging that it is the “most severe electoral defeat” in “years, or decades” and that “we did not expect things to turn out this way.”
Merz stated that the vote in the federal state of 2.14 million inhabitants “will have repercussions” and that even a glance at who congratulated AfD on its victory shows “the level of international attention this result has generated.”
He added that “when almost 60% of voters… cast their vote for political parties that question the democratic institutions of our country… it is an electoral result that we cannot ignore as if nothing had happened.” The chancellor admitted that this is “the most severe electoral defeat the CDU (Christian Democratic Union) has suffered in years, even decades.”
And indeed, with nearly 44% of the votes, AfD has more than doubled its 2021 result, leaving the CDU far behind, which has dropped from 37.1% of the votes to only 17.2%.
Although he emphasized that accepting the results is the “very essence of democracy,” Merz highlighted that there are things that are not subject to voting, such as “the rules of coexistence and the values of the German Constitution.” Thus, he pointed out that these values “are not subject to negotiation by the state.” “We know that Germany has a special responsibility due to its history. We will always maintain our political order and our firm rooting in Europe,” he reiterated.
The winner of the election night in Saxony-Anhalt was Ulrich Siegmund, the 35-year-old former air freshener salesman who could become the first far-right president in a German federal state since World War II.
“Our ‘Vision 2026’ has become reality; we have made history, dear friends. We are taking back control of our country. Everything starts here, in Saxony-Anhalt! We will not give in, nor give up our values; we will never become like those who have justly been punished today,” Siegmund said in his victory speech.
“This will cause a stir throughout Germany (…) And now, regarding what will happen in the coming days, obviously we have a mandate to govern; obviously, as democrats, we are always willing to extend a hand if in this Landtag there is any group or deputy who wants to solve the problems of our federal state with us,” he added, throwing down the gauntlet to the BSW (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – For Reason and Justice), the German party that claims to be left-wing but is willing to make deals with AfD to survive.
Born in the small town of Havelberg, Saxony-Anhalt, three weeks after German reunification in October 1990, Siegmund has leveraged his online popularity to get closer to power more than any other far-right politician in Germany since the end of the Nazi era in 1945. With more than 670,000 followers on Instagram and over 900,000 on TikTok, he is one of Germany’s most popular politicians. His videos accumulated 28 million views since June. According to a study by the University of Potsdam, he alone accounted for nearly two-thirds of the political content views in Saxony-Anhalt analyzed during the campaign.
It is no coincidence. Siegmund trained as a merchant, worked for years in sales, and studied Business Administration and Economic Psychology via distance learning. From those studies, he took a lesson he now applies precisely to politics: simple messages work when repeated. He also learned that selling is not just about placing a product but about provoking a feeling, notes the Spanish newspaper El Mundo.
His rise on social media began during the pandemic when he intensified his opposition to coronavirus restrictions and gained hundreds of thousands of followers. Since then, he has perfected the formula: short phrases, repetition, good humor, and a staging that seeks to erase any distance between politician and voter.
Before consolidating his political career, he worked in sales and at an ophthalmology clinic in Berlin. In 2014, he started a business activity in the marketing sector related to the commercialization of indoor fragrances and other types of scenting systems.
His first political affiliation was with the CDU, which he joined at 19. In 2014, he switched to AfD and two years later entered the Saxony-Anhalt Parliament. Since August 2022, he has shared the presidency of the parliamentary group with Oliver Kirchner. In 2025, he was elected AfD’s lead candidate for the regional elections held last Sunday, in which he obtained 44% of the votes. His electoral candidacy received the support of 98.3% of the delegates who participated in the internal elections.
His rise has occurred within an organization that maintains strong confrontation with other regional parties. The AfD section in Saxony-Anhalt has been classified since 2023 as far-right; the party has appealed this classification.
Likewise, the national intelligence agency has classified Siegmund as a “suspected extremist,” an accusation he rejects as politically motivated. The party has declared that Islam is incompatible with the German Constitution and has promised mass deportations of immigrants. Several of its leaders maintain close ties with Russia, and some have made veiled comments about the Nazi era, minimizing the Holocaust and repeating Nazi slogans, notes The New York Times.
Siegmund himself stated in an interview for Politico’s podcast that he could not “claim to judge” whether the Holocaust was the worst crime in human history, “because it is impossible for me to understand the entirety of human history.” He also refused to condemn supporters who chanted his surname, Siegmund, in the style of the Nazi salute “Sieg Heil.”
Nevertheless, Siegmund is not the great ideologue of the regional AfD. He has delegated the ideological aspect of the program to Hans-Thomas, an academic specialist in Islam born in Timișoara, Romania, founder of the “Patriotic Platform” in 2014 and close friend of Björn Höcke (the president of the AfD state branch in Thuringia), focusing on a simple goal: to give a more positive image of the regional AfD section, which the Office for the Protection of the Constitution had classified as “far-right.”
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Siegmund advocates, among other things, for a much more restrictive migration policy, deportations, and a fundamental change in regional policy. In his circle, there are trusted people who actively participated in the Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend (HDJ), an organization banned in 2009 for its “affinity with National Socialism” that aimed to educate children to become “National Socialist fighters for freedom” and taught minors “racial science.” One of them is Patrick Harr, the parliamentary group’s press spokesman and Siegmund’s right-hand man. But for Siegmund, those were “youthful sins,” “long prescribed,” details the Spanish newspaper El País.
“What changes would AfD introduce in Saxony-Anhalt?” asked the German channel Deutsche Welle. If they finally take regional government, AfD has promised “immediate deportation!” The declared goal, according to the party’s electoral program, is simply to deport as many immigrants without residence permits as possible.
The party has also committed to tightening asylum rules at all levels: it demands more preventive detention, mandatory work for asylum seekers, and intends to cut all state funding for integration programs, which it calls the “asylum industry.”
Additionally, it intends to exclude children and adolescents without permanent residence in Germany from regular education. Likewise, a “Working Group for Remigration” will be created within the state government to coordinate the state’s asylum policy.
It is still unclear how many of these measures a state government led by AfD could legally implement. For example, creating special categories for refugees could constitute a violation of international and European law, notes Deutsche Welle. And the question of who can and cannot be deported is the competence of the federal government, not an individual state.
On Monday, AfD held a press conference where its leaders, Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, along with Siegmund, called the result in Saxony-Anhalt a “historic victory” and immediately demanded that Chancellor Friedrich Merz call early federal elections to facilitate his replacement “before Christmas,” according to Die Welt.
Weidel called the CDU’s performance a “disaster” and said Chancellor Merz has become a “burden for the country’s development” before a population demanding change and rejecting “illegal migration, open borders” and a “disastrous energy policy.” Weidel closed her speech by assuring that “the CDU will never win federal elections again.”
The party co-leader, Tino Chrupalla, meanwhile, adopted a tone of moderation on Monday to calm fears about the party’s policies in power, assuring that “no one has to fear us” and that they are open to dialogue. However, the co-chairman was cautious, making a special call to the CDU to change its position regarding AfD. “The cordon sanitaire has been rejected by a clear majority,” he said.
For his part, the election winner, Ulrich Siegmund, extended “a hand to all democratic actors,” asking if any group or deputy “wants to face this shared historic task with us.”
Regarding this, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) said on Monday that it will not block the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) from coming to power in Saxony-Anhalt, hinting at a possible abstention in the investiture of candidate Ulrich Siegmund.
In an interview on public radio Deutschlandfunk, the leftist candidate in Saxony-Anhalt, Thomas Schulze, said that BSW will not participate in any political agreement to veto AfD, the election winner, questioning the so-called cordon sanitaire, a practice implemented in Germany in recent years to prevent the far-right party from gaining government positions.
“We have said that we will not participate in a coalition based on a ‘containment barrier’ against AfD. We have made it very clear that we will talk to all parties and, naturally, we will also try to advance the BSW proposals that are important to the people here in Saxony-Anhalt,” he said, opening up to cooperation with AfD.
AfD won 39 seats, just three short of the absolute majority needed to govern. If a third investiture vote is reached, a simple majority would suffice to elect the next leader of the state located in eastern Germany.
In any case, Schulze denied that the party will help AfD come to power, warning that the region has reached this situation precisely because of the cordon sanitaire practiced by traditional parties. “It is the parties that in recent years have raised that ‘red line,’ a real containment barrier, that received their corresponding electoral bill yesterday (Sunday),” he said. “They are responsible for it, not the BSW,” he added.
In any case, the regional leader of BSW said that his political formation’s proposal is to form a non-partisan government with an independent candidate agreed upon with the other formations.
“We will talk to the different parties. Whoever considers supporting us will vote for him. Yesterday it was clearly demonstrated that the state is deeply divided. That is why we need a president who can somehow unite both sides,” he explained, reiterating that this is his preferred scenario. “It will be a person, certainly, from here, from Saxony-Anhalt. We have several people in mind. But today we will not mention any names,” he said.
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