Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won Sunday's regional election in Saxony-Anhalt with about 44 percent of the vote, far ahead of the ruling Christian Democrats (CDU). It is the closest a far-right party has come to power at the state level in Germany since the Second World War. The AfD fell just three seats short of an outright majority. Lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund said Monday that talks were already under way to win over individual MPs from other parties willing to help form a governing majority. Read moreGermany’s far-right AfD wins big in key state election but falls short of majority The result strains Germany's "firewall" political consensus against working with the far right and much depends now on the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), a populist left-leaning but immigration-sceptic and pro-Russia party who the AfD could potentially rely on to build a coalition. FRANCE 24 spoke to Ed Turner, a German politics specialist at Aston University in Birmingham, about what the result means for Saxony-Anhalt and Germany. FRANCE 24: The AfD didn't just win this election with its usual voters, it gained ground across almost every demographic in Saxony-Anhalt. What does that broader appeal tell us about how the party's support base is evolving in Germany? Ed Turner: The AfD did particularly well amongst some of the groups which you'd expect. That means working class voters, voters who think their own economic situation isn’t good, voters with a relatively low level of qualification – and those groups are particularly well represented in Saxony-Anhalt. On top of that, there is something specifically eastern German about some of its support. For example, in eastern Germany, for partly historic and cultural reasons, there is much less support for Germany's backing of Ukraine in its current war with Russia, and there's a sense of being second-class citizens and wanting to give voice to that dissatisfaction.