Ever since the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won a regional election last month, not a day goes by without Ola Akhras and her husband discussing whether they should go back to Syria.
During its first sitting, the 83-seat legislature will elect its Speaker, a post that traditionally goes to the largest party, and the AfD hopes for an initial symbolic victory. The State’s next Governor is unlikely to be chosen before December 2026. The 13-year-old party has gained support particularly rapidly in Germany’s formerly Communist and economically weaker eastern States, including Saxony-Anhalt, though it also continues to gain at the national level; it is the strongest Opposition party in parliament and leads recent polls. It remains uncertain whether the AfD will form the next government in Saxony-Anhalt — it fell three seats short of a majority in the September 6, 2026, election.
The AfD’s victory in Saxony-Anhalt last month underlined the party’s skill in capitalising on discontent with issues well beyond its core theme of curbing immigration, as Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s unpopular national government struggles to turn around Germany’s stubbornly sluggish economy. The party’s strong showing has unsettled migrants and those Germans who thought the nation was immune to nationalism after the horrors of the Nazi past. But many immigrants and refugees fear that if the far-right party succeeds in heading the State government, it could try to implement its campaign promises, which include more and faster deportations, as well as restrictions on the admission of asylum seekers.
There are no figures yet showing whether racist incidents have increased since the election, but “counselling centres are extremely busy, the phones are ringing off the hook, counselling appointments are fully booked, and people are in great need of counselling and support,” said Undra Dressler, Executive Director of the Saxony-Anhalt State Network of Migrant Organisations. The party explicitly proposes refraining from recruiting workers it describes as “culturally foreign,” and ending a State programme designed to support the integration of foreign skilled workers, said Rahim Hajji, a professor of social and health services at Magdeburg-Stendal University of Applied Sciences.
