Saxony-Anhalt, AfD at 43.8% without a majority of seats

The regional vote in Saxony-Anhalt on September 6 delivers a clear provisional result and an open political outcome. According to data released by the regional electoral office, the AfD obtained 43.8%, against 20.8% in the 2021 elections. The CDU stopped at 17.2%. However, the party that came first did not win an absolute majority of seats, and the formation of what would be the first far-right-led regional government in Germany since the postwar period remains uncertain.

Three separate channels converge on this figure: the provisional data from the electoral office, taken up in Today.it’s roundup; exit polls and Associated Press dispatches published by NPR; and the morning briefing from the Anadolu agency. These are three accounts of the same electoral reality, but from sources independent of one another.

The gap between the 43.8% of votes and the majority of seats is the point on which the German week will turn. The available materials do not report the seat allocation, nor the percentages of the other lists, nor statements of availability or exclusion from the other parties. Without those numbers, any hypothesis of a coalition or a minority government is an exercise, not a news item: this newspaper will publish them once they are released by the electoral office.

The jump from 20.8% in 2021 to 43.8% is the certain figure; the decisive seat is the one still missing.

What we don’t know. We don’t know how many seats belong to each list, nor how far short the AfD falls of a majority. We don’t know whether the provisional figure will be revised in the official result. We don’t know the reactions of the parties’ national leaderships, nor any contacts opened at the regional level.

London, a seat becomes vacant. On the other side of the Channel the move is procedural but with concrete effects: former Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vacated his seat in the House of Commons by accepting appointment to the Chiltern Hundreds, the formal instrument through which a British member of parliament resigns. In the constituency of Holborn and St Pancras a by-election will be held to reassign the seat. The news currently comes from a single source (Wikipedia’s current events portal, which gathers dispatches from BBC News and Al Jazeera); no independent confirmation is available, and the date of the vote is not known.

Brussels restarts. The official agenda of the European Commission sets a meeting of the College of Commissioners for September 9 and, for September 16, the annual State of the Union address, which Ursula von der Leyen will deliver before the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Among the topics listed on the agenda for the occasion are competitiveness, defense and the protection of digital life. Here too the source is a single one — the Commission’s institutional website — but it is the primary source for the calendar.

The three events have no direct connection and it is not advisable to construct one: one is a regional election result, one is a British parliamentary procedure, one is an institutional calendar. However, they do have one measurable thing in common for the reader returning to the page: two dates already set — September 9 and 16 in Brussels and Strasbourg — and two appointments still without a date, the official result of Saxony-Anhalt and the Holborn and St Pancras by-election.

Sources: Today.it; NPR; Anadolu Agency; Wikipedia Portal:Current events; European Commission.