What happenedGerman Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Monday said he was “deeply shocked” by the far-right Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) victory in the weekend’s state elections in Saxony-Anhalt. AfD won a 43.8% plurality, according to exit polls, but fell three seats short of the majority needed to form a government. No far-right party has governed a state or major city in Germany since the Nazi era, and the AfD’s win in the small eastern state was the biggest challenge yet to the “firewall” that Merz’s Christian Democrats and other mainstream parties have erected against political extremism.
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