In the elections held on Sunday, September 1st in the German states of Thuringia and Saxony, a historic, if predictable, event occurred: for the first time since the end of the Second World War and the fall of Nazism, elections to the parliament of a German state were held by a far-right populist party, Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The AfD was the most voted party in Thuringia with 32.8% of the vote, improving on its previous result by 9.4 points, and with a 9.2-point lead and nine seats over the second-placed Christian Democratic Union (CDU). The Left (Die Linke), which had won the previous elections in this state, in 2019, with 31%, fell to 13.1%, while the Social Democratic Party (SPD) remained at a meager 6.1 points, 2.1 points less. its result in 2019. In Saxony, the AfD is second with 30.6%, improving on its previous result by 3.1 points, and only 1.3 points and one seat from the CDU, which has won every election in this state since German reunification, although by increasingly less margin. Here too, the left-wing parties obtained a poor result: 7.3% for the SPD (7.7% in 2019), and 4.5% for Die Linke (10.4% in 2019).
