When the Firewall Is No Longer Enough

The problem with political walls is that they may contain a party. Containing its voters is considerably more difficult.

In Saxony-Anhalt, AfD won 44.2% according to election-night projections. The CDU fell to 18%, roughly half its previous result. Turnout, moreover, was exceptionally high. It is therefore difficult to explain such an outcome as the product of an apathetic majority staying home. People went to the polls.

And they voted.

That detail changes the conversation considerably.

For years, much of German politics responded to AfD’s rise with an understandable formula: isolate it. Friedrich Merz even set himself the goal of cutting its support in half. In this Land, precisely the opposite happened: AfD almost doubled its share while the CDU lost roughly half of its own.

Perhaps the time has come, then, to ask an uncomfortable question.

What if the problem is not only AfD?

A firewall can determine who is considered unfit to govern with. It cannot replace an economic policy, resolve social discontent, manage immigration, restore confidence in institutions or persuade citizens who feel — rightly or wrongly — that Berlin talks a great deal about them but rarely with them.

Ulrich Siegmund understood that vacuum. He is 35, polished in manner, and carries a programme that is anything but harmless. His proposals include radical measures concerning education, immigration, public broadcasting and church funding. Moreover, the regional AfD organisation has been classified by domestic intelligence authorities as right-wing extremist. None of this should be swept under the carpet simply to make the analysis more convenient.

But neither should those who voted for him be swept under another carpet.

That is where Germany’s real problem begins.

When nearly one voter in two chooses a force outside the traditional political perimeter, calling them extremists, misinformed, resentful or simply wrong may provide a few minutes of moral satisfaction.

Then the ballot boxes have to be opened again.

And the votes are still there.

Democracy contains a small cruelty sometimes forgotten by those who administer it: citizens are under no obligation to vote correctly according to the government’s judgement.

They even have the right to vote badly.

And everyone else has the right — and the duty — to challenge that choice politically.

But challenging it requires considerably more work than building a wall around an opponent. It requires asking why so many people are willing to walk through the door that established parties have spent years marking as forbidden.

The CDU now faces precisely that contradiction. If it keeps the Brandmauer intact, preventing an AfD government in Saxony-Anhalt may require an extraordinarily heterogeneous coalition. If it begins to breach it, the party will have altered one of the principles German politics has maintained for years in dealing with the far right.

Either road carries a price.

And this is probably Sunday’s most important result: AfD does not yet need to govern in order to condition government.

It forces the CDU to reconsider its strategy, puts pressure on Friedrich Merz, changes the calculations ahead of forthcoming regional elections and turns an election in a relatively small eastern Land into a national warning.

Berlin can keep the wall.

It can reinforce it.

It can repaint it and put up more signs explaining why nobody should cross it.

But if the number of citizens gathering on the other side continues to grow, sooner or later Germany will have to do something considerably more difficult than guarding the bricks:

ask what brought them there.

Because democracies rarely begin to have serious problems merely when uncomfortable parties appear.

The serious problems begin when comfortable parties stop understanding their voters.

🖋️ © By The Cartographer of Power | 2026 — All Rights Reserved

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Sources consulted: ANSA, ARD/Tagesschau and German press.