“For us, it’s a historic success,” said Alice Weidel, one of the AfD’s national leaders.
In the more populous state of Saxony, the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) appears, for now, to have just staved off the far right, coming in first with around 31 percent of the vote, according to an exit poll, with the AfD trailing close behind.
A new populist-left party, Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), is set to finish third in both states, according to the early projections.
The surge of parties on the extremes of the political spectrum is likely to be seen as another blow to German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s already weak, tripartite coalition government.
The three coalition parties — Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the fiscally conservative Free Democratic Party (FDP) — suffered losses, according to early projections. In Thuringia, the Greens and the FDP appear to have both crashed out of the state parliament, failing to meet the five-percent threshold necessary to gain seats, according to the early projections.
Despite the AfD’s strong performance, the party is unlikely to take real governing power. All other parties set to make it into the state parliaments have refused to govern in coalitions with the AfD.