Germany’s far-right AfD scores its biggest win

illuminem summarises for you the essential news of the day, reviewed by our editorial team. Read the full piece on POLITICO or enjoy below:

🗞️ Driving the news: The Alternative for Germany won roughly 44% in Sunday's Saxony-Anhalt state election, its strongest result since the party's founding in 2013 and the German far right's largest since the Second World War
• The result gives it 39 of the 42 seats needed to govern outright
• Chancellor Friedrich Merz's CDU, which has held the state for 24 years, fell below 18% from 37.1% in 2021

🔭 The context: Saxony-Anhalt has Germany's lowest average net income, and economic anxiety drove the vote
• An ARD survey found 70% of voters greatly worried that rising prices would prevent them paying bills
• 58% fearing they could not maintain their standard of living as only 9% approve of Merz's performance
• The AfD campaigned on deporting migrants, closer relations with Moscow, and reducing Nazi-era material in school curricula
• The state intelligence agency has designated its local branch a right-wing extremist organisation

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: Energy costs sat among the economic grievances driving the result, in a state whose industrial base is exposed to transition costs, a pattern relevant across Europe's carbon-intensive regions, where the distributional burden of decarbonisation is becoming an electoral variable
• The AfD's stated preference for closer ties with Moscow would, if it reached federal influence, cut against the energy-security rationale that has underpinned Germany's accelerated renewables build-out since 2022.

⏭️ What's next: Governing depends on reaching 42 seats, most plausibly via Sahra Wagenknecht's BSW, expected to hold four, or by peeling off CDU legislators
• The BSW has proposed a nonpartisan premier with shifting alliances, which the AfD is unlikely to accept
• Mecklenburg–Western Pomerania and Berlin vote on 20 September, with the AfD leading in the former

💬 One quote: "We've made history. We're taking back our country. It starts here in Saxony-Anhalt" — Ulrich Siegmund, AfD candidate for regional premier

📈 One stat: Around 44% for the AfD, against under 18% for the CDU — down from 37.1% in 2021

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