MAGDEBURG, Germany — An eastern German region voted Sunday in an election that could bring to power the first far-right state government in the nation’s post-World War II history.
Polls opened at 8:00 am local time (0600 GMT) and some 1.7 million voters have until 6:00 pm (1600 GMT) to cast their ballots, with first projections expected shortly after.
The vote for the state legislature in Saxony-Anhalt, a region of 2.1 million people west of Berlin, has gained outsized prominence because it represents the best chance yet of a governor’s post for the far-right, anti-migration Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
That would be the biggest prize in the party’s 13-year history, at a time when there’s widespread discontent with an unpopular national government that has yet to persuade voters it can get the country’s sluggish economy moving. It would be at least a symbolic blow to Chancellor Friedrich Merz, whose center-right party has led Saxony-Anhalt for 24 years.
AfD is the biggest opposition party in Germany’s national parliament and is strongest in the formerly communist and less prosperous east, where Saxony-Anhalt is located. Its candidate for governor, Ulrich Siegmund, declared that “we will write history here.”
