What if the AfD joins the government in Saxony-Anhalt?
State elections are coming up in eastern Germany in September. According to polls, the AfD is set to emerge as the largest party. Keeping the right-wing party out of government in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania would likely require an unusually broad coalition. That poses a challenge for the other parties, says political scientist Sophie Suda.
27 August 2026 | Catherine Weyer
Sophie Suda, Saxony-Anhalt goes to the polls on September 6. Polls put the AfD at more than 40% of the vote. How realistic is it that the AfD will be part of the next government?
That depends not only on how many votes the AfD receives, but also on how many parties clear the 5% threshold. If, for example, only four parties make it into parliament, the AfD’s share of seats will be very large. A single-party government would then be more likely than a government with six parties represented in the state parliament. That is the AfD’s only route into government. All the other parties have ruled out a coalition with the AfD and, under the so-called firewall policy, even any form of cooperation with it.
In a study, you examined the stability of European governments in which populist parties participate. What did you find?
We examined governments in several European countries between 1990 and 2021 and defined various factors that can lead to a government ending prematurely. The strongest factor was the participation of populist parties.
Why is that?
Populists are characterized by the belief that they are the only true representatives of the people. As a result, they tend to make maximalist demands and are unable or barely able to compromise. This makes negotiations within a coalition difficult for populists. If they make compromises, they have to justify them to their voters. But a coalition can also pose a major challenge for its partners: they have to justify why they entered government with a populist party in the first place.
One of the countries you studied is Austria, where the right-wing populist FPÖ has entered governing coalitions several times, only for them to collapse prematurely. Why has the ÖVP nonetheless repeatedly chosen the FPÖ as a coalition partner?
For one thing, it was not always the Populist Party responsible for the government's collapse. The most recent coalition fell apart over the Ibiza scandal, and scandals pose problems for any government.
At the same time, the ÖVP, like other conservative parties, faces a dilemma: Ideologically, the FPÖ is the party with which it has the most in common. Voters may find it difficult to understand if the ÖVP instead forms a coalition with the SPÖ on the other side of the political spectrum.
You excluded Switzerland from your study. Why?
Switzerland is a special case in this respect. That is because of its institutions and its consensus-based political system. There are no snap elections within this institutional framework, and the members of the Federal Council collectively defend their decisions in public. This makes it easier for individual parties, such as the populist SVP, to play this dual role. They can participate in government while at the same time criticizing government decisions.
Looking at the possible scenarios following the state elections in Germany, there will either be a government involving the AfD or a strong AfD opposition. What might a governing alliance without the AfD look like?
It would be a very broad alliance, with all the challenges that entails. Several parties with different ideologies would have to reach agreement. The coalition partners would need to work together while also strengthening their own party profiles and making clear why they are part of the government.
At the same time, this would give the AfD fertile ground to claim that all the other parties are an elite banding together against it as the election winner.
And what would an AfD government mean for the German states?
The AfD has various policy demands, and it remains to be seen how far they could actually be implemented, for example, regarding compulsory schooling or public broadcasting. At the same time, the party would gain access to a great deal of information, including information about cooperation between the states and from the security services and the Office for the Protection of the Constitution, which also monitors the AfD.
It is impossible to predict how the party would handle this information. Being in government in one of the German states would also confer a certain degree of legitimacy on the party.
Some argue that the AfD should be given a chance to govern because it would quickly become clear that its demands cannot be implemented and voters would punish the party at the next election.
Experience shows that this kind of disillusionment does not work. The loss of votes at the next election is often not as great as one might expect. One reason is that some simple promises can in fact be implemented. When demands cannot be implemented, structural obstacles can be cited as an explanation: Another elite is preventing them from doing so, for example the EU or the courts.
This interview has been edited and condensed for publication. Listen to the full episode of the University of Basel podcast “Unisonar” (in German) and subscribe to the podcast on your preferred podcast platform.
