There has been much coverage in recent days of the outcome of the state election in Saxony-Anhalt, which lies in eastern Germany. It is unusual for regional elections in other countries to generate such debate in the UK media. The reason for such high interest is the very strong performance of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party. The AfD in Saxony-Anhalt has been classified as ‘right-wing extremist’ by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency.
Post-war German society has put much effort into facing up to the fact that a fascist dictatorship rose to power in their country in the 1930s, dismantling democracy in the process, hoping to inoculate themselves against something similar ever happening again. Therefore, it is perhaps unsurprising that the election outcome in Saxony-Anhalt has produced such soul-searching in Germany and wider Europe.
2026’s Saxony-Anhalt state election
The AfD won 44% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, a similar share to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in 2019. Boris Johnson won a 74-seat majority on that share of the vote, so will AfD be taking full control of the state? The short answer is no, as unlike the UK, the results of elections in Germany closely match how people vote.
As with German Federal elections, the state election in Saxony-Anhalt was conducted under the Additional Member System (AMS). Under AMS, voters get two votes – one in a single-member First Past the Post constituency (FPTP), where the candidate with the most votes wins; the other for a party list covering a wider area.
The party list votes are used to award seats in a way that ensures that the overall election result is much more representative of how people voted than would be the case under a solely First Past The Post system, such as is used for UK general elections.
First Past the Post hands control to anyone with the right number of votes
Exploring the results in Saxony-Anhalt provides another example of how, actually, it is the First Past The Post voting system that gives parties of any stripe, including extremist parties, the opportunity of winning majority control of legislatures or parliaments without the support of a majority of voters.
In the Saxony-Anhalt state election, 41 seats were elected via FPTP and 42 seats were elected via the state-wide party list.
Across the 41 FPTP seats, the AfD received 44.3% of votes cast, yet won all but three of the FPTP seats available, 38 out of 41, which constitutes 92.7% of the FPTP seats. The CDU, which came second on FPTP votes cast (24.0%) received zero FPTP seats. The FPTP constituency map, below, is stark with the three purple dots representing urban enclaves won by Die Linke or The Left party.