Germany’s far-right AfD is poised for power – and split on whether to cozy up to Trump

AfD’s Saxony-Anhalt Gambit: What a Historic State Victory Would Mean for German Politics

Activelifezero.com – Sunday’s state election in Saxony-Anhalt carries stakes that extend far beyond one eastern German region. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) enters the ballot race with a commanding lead in opinion tracking, and if it secures an outright majority, the far-right formation will govern a German state for the first time since the end of the Second World War. That milestone would mark a structural rupture in a political landscape that, for eight decades, has kept extremist parties locked out of executive authority at the state level.

Pollster Infratest dimap projects the AfD at roughly 42 percent of the vote in the state — a figure that represents a dramatic surge from the party’s support levels just a few years earlier. Under Germany’s proportional-representation system, such a result would hand the AfD a governing mandate without requiring coalition partners, something no far-right group has achieved in a German state since 1945.

The Domestic Wall: Why the AfD Remains Politically Isolated

Yet the path from a strong electoral showing to actual governing power is not automatic. German intelligence agencies have formally designated the AfD as an “extremist” party, a classification rooted in the formation’s rhetoric surrounding Muslim citizens and its stance on immigration. Mainstream conservative and progressive parties alike have publicly distanced themselves from the AfD, and every other parliamentary group in the country observes an unwritten convention known as the “firewall” — a mutual pledge never to enter coalition talks or pass joint legislation with the far-right formation.

Should the AfD fall short of an absolute majority on Sunday, the remaining parties could assemble a patchwork coalition specifically designed to keep the AfD out of the state cabinet. That contingency underscores how much the party’s domestic standing still depends on a single electoral threshold rather than on broad-based acceptance.

Transatlantic Ties: From Munich to Washington

Partly in response to that domestic isolation, the AfD has cultivated visible relationships with the American MAGA movement. The connections go well beyond shared aesthetic branding — campaign hats reading “Make Germany Great Again” have become a familiar sight at AfD rallies. Substantive political contact has also multiplied.

The party’s co-leader, Alice Weidel, met US Vice President JD Vance on the margins of the Munich Security Conference last year. In a separate appearance, Weidel joined Elon Musk for a livestreamed event on his social platform, X. A small delegation of AfD parliamentarians also travelled to Washington to attend President Donald Trump’s second inauguration ceremony.

Washington officials have reciprocated. Vance used his 2025 address in Munich to call on German legislators to dismantle the firewall convention. Secretary of State Marco Rubio publicly criticized German authorities for formally labelling the AfD extremist, describing the decision as

“tyranny in disguise.”

A Growing Unease: Foreign Policy Friction and Shifting Calculus

That transatlantic alignment, however, is showing cracks. As Trump’s administration pursues a series of foreign-policy moves that have drawn sharp criticism across Europe — including military action in Iran, aggressive posturing over Greenland, and intervention in Venezuela — factions within the AfD appear to be recalibrating their public posture toward Washington. The United States’ standing among ordinary Germans has slipped, and several of Trump’s decisions have generated widespread domestic disapproval.

A March survey by Germany’s public broadcaster ARD found that 58 percent of respondents regarded the strikes on Iran as unjustified. In January, a separate ARD poll showed that 72 percent of the population considered the arrest of former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro unjustified. Those numbers complicate any straightforward narrative of German far-right enthusiasm for American foreign policy.

Expert Reading: Alignment With Limits

Almut Möller, director for European and global affairs at the European Policy Centre, a Brussels-based think tank, characterizes the relationship as ideologically convergent but operationally complicated.

“I think there is ideological alignment on key issues, and I think the AfD is also learning from the MAGA movement,” Möller said.

She noted that the two formations converge most sharply on rhetoric about how a country should

“care about (its) own people and stop caring about everybody else.”

At the same time, Möller cautioned that the partnership is far from frictionless, particularly when American policies touch the German economy — whether through Trump-era tariffs or through fuel-price spikes linked to the Iran conflict.

“Having said that, it is not a straightforward relationship to handle at all times,” Möller said, particularly when it comes to “policies that affect the German economy.”

Domestic Pledges: Remigration and the Question of Who Gets Sent Away

Markus Frohnmaier, the AfD’s foreign-policy spokesperson and Bundestag member, told CNN he has made multiple trips to the United States this year and has built strong personal links with MAGA figures. Speaking in his parliamentary office days before the Saxony-Anhalt vote, he emphasized the overlap between the two movements, especially on immigration.

On the domestic front, the AfD has campaigned on what it calls “remigration” — a programme of large-scale deportation of migrants and refugees paired with the expansion of mass detention facilities. Party officials have repeatedly deployed anti-Muslim language and have specifically named Muslim and Ukrainian residents when describing whom they would prioritize for removal. Additional pledges include creating separate school tracks, though the full scope of those proposals remains under development.

The Saxony-Anhalt result will therefore serve as both a domestic litmus test and a transatlantic signal. A majority victory would embolden the AfD’s Washington-facing wing and pressure other German parties to reconsider the firewall. A narrow loss, by contrast, would leave the formation dependent on continued external validation while its domestic isolation persists — a position that, given the current friction over Iran, Greenland, and Venezuela, may prove increasingly difficult to sustain.