AfD politician Tobias Rausch elected Saxony-Anhalt parliament president as SPD protests in Berlin

Secret ballot in Magdeburg

The Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt elected Alternative for Germany (AfD) politician Tobias Rausch as its parliamentary president during a secret ballot in Magdeburg. Rausch secured 48 votes out of 82 cast on the first ballot, exceeding the combined seat total of the AfD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) by four votes. The outcome followed the September 6 state election, in which voter turnout reached 77.8%, with the AfD emerging as the strongest force after securing nearly 44% of the vote and 39 of the 83 seats. While BSW lawmakers had announced their backing for the AfD candidate, parliamentary leaders from the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) had instructed their faction to abstain. The surplus votes indicated that multiple lawmakers outside the AfD and BSW, likely from the CDU, backed Rausch.

SPD protest march in Berlin

Following the vote in Magdeburg, members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) Bundestag faction organized an unannounced protest march through central Berlin on Tuesday evening. Lawmakers walked from the Reichstag building through the Brandenburg Gate to Bebelplatz, the site where National Socialist students burned books in 1933. Demonstrators carried printed copies of the German Basic Law, and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius addressed the crowd before leading the group in singing the national anthem. Faction leader Matthias Miersch described the election as a break with post-war parliamentary norms, noting that an AfD politician now held a state parliamentary presidency for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic.

This is the day of anger, this is the day of disappointment that democrats have apparently learned nothing from history and are letting history repeat itself. Whoever permitted this has committed an offense against the democracy of our great country.

Scrutiny over the CDU firewall

The election drew immediate recriminations across federal party leaderships regarding the parliamentary cordon sanitaire, or firewall, against the AfD. SPD co-leader Lars Klingbeil called on Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the CDU leadership to explain how an AfD candidate received votes from beyond the party's formal allies. SPD General Secretary Tim Klüssendorf and Thuringia Interior Minister Georg Maier urged the CDU to investigate potential defectors within its ranks. Alliance 90/The Greens co-leader Felix Banaszak also accused the CDU of facilitating a gradual normalization of far-right authority.

That the candidate of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, classified as confirmed right-wing extremist, was elected Landtag president with significantly more than AfD votes raises very pressing questions. It is a breach of taboo to elect right-wing extremists to such offices. Not only the BSW, but also the CDU must urgently explain how this could happen.

Future governance and BSW stance

Representatives from both the AfD and BSW argued that the Magdeburg vote demonstrated the collapse of the established parties' firewall policy. Bernd Baumann, the first parliamentary secretary of the AfD Bundestag faction, stated on television that the strategy of Chancellor Merz had failed. BSW federal leader Fabio De Masi defended engaging with the AfD in parliamentary procedure, arguing that isolating the party behind a firewall had allowed it to expand without testing its governance capabilities. Attention has now turned to December 2026, when the Landtag could vote on a minister-president, with BSW founder Sahra Wagenknecht suggesting that AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund stands a realistic chance of securing a majority.