Since its establishment in 2013, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has been strengthening its foothold in several states in eastern Germany, three of which are holding elections in 2024. In Saxony, the AfD has been steadily growing in popularity and increasing its share of the vote with each election. Following the AfD’s first round of state elections in 2014, the party received 159,611 votes, or 9.7% of the vote share. The AfD was still several percentage points behind the large established parties, the center-right CDU, the Left Party and center-left SPD, but it gained 14 seats in Saxony’s parliament. The result put the AfD on the map for not just voters in Saxony, but across Germany.

Over the next five years, the AfD continued to gain popularity across the country. Originally an anti-Euro party, the AfD switched to an anti-immigration platform during the peak of the European migration crisis in 2015, campaigning on values of German nationalism, conservatism, and Euroscepticism. In 2019, the AfD came second in the Saxony state elections reaching 27.5% of the vote, right behind the CDU with 32.1% of the vote. The AfD gained an additional 24 seats in this election, bringing their total to 38, while all the other parties, with the exception of the Greens, lost seats.

Despite, or in spite of, the AfD’s extremist far-right ideology, the party is the second most popular bloc in Germany. The AfD is expected to see another increase in votes in this year’s Saxony state elections, with the party leading in the polls as of January 2024 at 34.4%, surpassing the CDU's 31%.

This question will resolve when the official election results are announced by the Saxony state government after September 1, 2024.

SachsenTREND Januar 2024

Current Election Trend for Saxony 

Wahlrecht.de Umfragen Sachsen

Germany's far-right party now polls higher than the three parties in government 

2019 Saxony state election