Opinion
The AfD Won in Saxony-Anhalt. The Wrong Lesson Is That Germany Has Closed Its Doors.
Germany’s far right has just won 43.8 percent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt. For readers in the Middle East and North Africa, one interpretation will be tempting: Germany has had enough of migration, and the consequences will be felt by anyone who studies, works or builds partnerships there.
That conclusion is too easy. Migration mattered in this election. But the result was not a referendum on migrants, and treating it as one would miss both why the AfD won and what the result can realistically change for Germany’s relationships with the region.
What happened
On 6 September, the AfD won 43.8 percent of the second vote in Saxony-Anhalt, up from 20.8 percent in 2021. The CDU fell from 37.1 to 17.2 percent. The SPD received 9.3 percent, the Greens 8.9 percent, the Left 8.6 percent and the BSW 5.3 percent. The FDP, after five years in government, fell to 2.6 percent and left the Landtag.
Turnout was 77.8 percent, up from 60.3 percent in 2021. The new parliament has 83 seats. The AfD won 39, three short of the 42-seat absolute majority.
Nor was everything in the result about immigration. Post-election analysis found social security was the most important issue, followed by peace in Europe, the economy, internal security and education. Berlin also took much of the blame: 59 percent said the federal government deserved a political warning, rising to 89 percent among AfD voters.
Take the migration argument seriously
The strongest version of the migration argument should not be caricatured. Many voters believe immigration has moved faster than Germany’s institutions can absorb. They worry about public services, security and cultural change. Among AfD voters, 91 percent said there were now too many foreigners living in Germany, while 85 percent said the country’s way of life was changing too much.
And the AfD campaigned hard on this sentiment. A MIDEM analysis found that migration and integration occupied 18.2 percent of its state election programme, with 86 related promises.
It is therefore understandable that the result gets described as a rejection of migration. But this is where the argument starts to break down.
The error is in turning one concern into the whole vote
Foreign nationals accounted for 7.9 percent of Saxony-Anhalt’s population at the end of 2025, well below the national figure of 14.9 percent. The figure cannot describe lived experience on its own, but it should complicate the idea that the election was a straightforward reaction to high immigration.
The economic numbers complicate it further. Saxony-Anhalt has been losing working-age Germans for years. According to the Federal Employment Agency, the number of social-insurance contributors with foreign citizenship rose from 20,260 in 2015 to 75,300 in 2025, while the number of German employees has declined for demographic reasons. In 2025, 22.7 percent of businesses with social-insurance employees had at least one foreign worker.
The figures come from Germany’s Federal Employment Agency, which says foreign workers are increasingly important to regional labour-market stability. In health care alone, 6,383 foreign nationals were in social-insurance employment in mid-2025, including 5,258 from outside the EU.
A state can reasonably want tighter borders for irregular migration, faster asylum decisions and better integration while still needing people from abroad to keep hospitals, factories and businesses operating. The serious question is whether Germany can distinguish between them instead of treating every form of migration as one problem.
The cost of getting that distinction wrong
Making migration broadly harder may satisfy a demand for control while making it more difficult to recruit the workers a shrinking region actually needs. It can also make Germany less attractive to students, researchers, entrepreneurs and skilled professionals.
The AfD’s own programme is revealing. Its migration proposals are overwhelmingly restrictive. MIDEM found no measures in its 86 migration-related promises aimed at liberalising migration or integration policy. That may be politically effective. It is a weak answer to a labour market already relying on foreign workers.
The election was also a protest against political delivery. Voters were deeply dissatisfied with the federal government, while the CDU’s long period in state government ended with its worst result yet. When services, infrastructure and administration fail, blaming mobility does not solve the underlying problem.
The FDP did not escape that judgement. Its 2.6 percent is a serious defeat after five years in government and a campaign centred on less bureaucracy, infrastructure and economic growth. Parties challenging the AfD cannot expect voters to return simply because it is described as dangerous. They need to offer something that works better.
Why this matters beyond Germany
Saxony-Anhalt cannot rewrite Germany’s migration law, and it cannot determine European asylum policy. Those decisions are taken mainly at federal and EU level. But that does not make the election irrelevant for people looking towards Germany from the MENA region.
The political pressure is moving upward. Germany’s migration system is already tied to a wider European framework, with rules on asylum, borders, returns and responsibility divided between national governments and the European Union. The EU Pact on Migration and Asylum only began applying in June 2026, underlining how much of the system depends on coordination between Brussels and national capitals.
This is where the AfD’s appeal deserves to be understood rather than caricatured. It offers simple answers to problems that are genuinely difficult: how to control irregular migration, process asylum claims quickly, return people who have no right to stay, and still attract workers Germany needs. The existing system often looks incoherent to the people expected to live with it, whether they are German municipalities under pressure or migrants trying to understand how they can legally study, work or build a future in Germany.
That failure belongs to established politics. It cannot simply be blamed on voters who have become frustrated with it.
For MENA, the consequences are practical. German and European decisions affect who can study, work and build businesses in Germany, how quickly legal pathways function, and how predictable cooperation on migration becomes. A state election in eastern Germany does not settle those questions. It can, however, strengthen the political demand for answers at the levels that do.
Sources: preliminary election results, Landeswahlleiter Sachsen-Anhalt (7–8 September 2026); Landtag Sachsen-Anhalt, constitutional and government-formation provisions; Mercator Forum Migration und Demokratie (MIDEM), “Was Parteien versprechen – und was sie halten” (1 September 2026); ARD/Infratest dimap, Sachsen-Anhalt election analysis, September 2026; Bundesagentur für Arbeit, Regionaldirektion Sachsen-Anhalt-Thüringen, labour-market updates of 23 March, 9 April, 19 June and 28 August 2026; Statistisches Landesamt Sachsen-Anhalt, foreign population data, 15 April 2026; Ministry of the Interior of Saxony-Anhalt, Verfassungsschutzberichte and current classification of the AfD state branch; German Basic Law, Articles 1, 20, 21 and 79; Constitution of Saxony-Anhalt, Article 65.