Campact launches 620,000-euro campaign to block AfD majority in Saxony-Anhalt election

Campaign launch

On August 14, the Berlin-based campaign organisation Campact unveiled a "strategic voting" initiative in Magdeburg, the capital of Saxony-Anhalt. The campaign urges voters in the state to cast their second ballot for either the SPD or the Greens, two parties polling near the 5% threshold needed to enter the state parliament. The organisation has budgeted approximately 620,000 euros for the effort, funding posters, direct mailings, and print and digital advertisements. The campaign includes 13,000 posters in cities and towns across the state. A banner action was held on Domplatz in front of the Landtag building to mark the launch.

Felix Kolb, Campact's executive director, framed the stakes in stark terms.

For the first time, a right-extremist party could win a majority of mandates in a state and thereby also appoint the minister-president.

The polling picture

A poll of 2,604 residents of Saxony-Anhalt, conducted by the institute Pollytix and commissioned by Campact, provides the factual basis for the campaign. It puts the AfD at 43%, the CDU at 23%, the Linke at 13%, the SPD at 7%, the Greens at 5%, and the BSW at 4%, with other parties each below 3%. According to Campact, the AfD, CDU, and Linke are certain to enter the new Landtag. The SPD and Greens are expected to clear the 5% threshold but their entry is "not at all secured," Kolb said. If both parties fail, roughly 10% of votes would be lost, potentially handing the AfD an absolute majority of mandates with as little as 42% of the vote.

Funding and party support

Campact reported that the 620,000 euros comes from a "NoAfD-Fonds" established last year, fed by small donations from more than 75,000 contributors. The organisation has raised over 2.5 million euros in total ahead of the state elections in Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with funds also going to local initiatives and associations. The SPD and Greens each reported a large donation of 310,000 euros from Campact to the Bundestag administration. Campact stated that no money flows directly to the two parties' campaigns; the donations are reported because the campaign indirectly supports them. The organisation does not recommend voting for the BSW, arguing that even if it entered the Landtag, it could support or enable the election of an AfD minister-president through abstention.

A "historic" election

Political scientist Albrecht von Lucke, editor at the monthly magazine "Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik," described the election as absolutely historic in an interview.

The election in Saxony-Anhalt is absolutely historic because it could, for the first time, mean the breakthrough of a right-radical party in Germany after 1945, even with an absolute majority.

Von Lucke argued the result would reveal a fundamental rupture between east and west. He characterised AfD lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund as a "chameleon" who presents himself as moderate and approachable while the party programme remains the most radical the AfD has ever put forward. Siegmund's announced programme for his first 100 days in office amounts to a hard austerity programme, von Lucke said, oriented toward "everything for our own, no longer modern and cosmopolitan, but German."

Precedent and what is next

Campact ran a similar campaign before the 2024 state election in Saxony, when it called for strategic voting for the Linke to prevent an AfD blocking minority in the Dresden Landtag. The Linke missed the 5% threshold but entered parliament through several direct mandates. The current campaign in Saxony-Anhalt faces a tighter margin: the Greens poll at exactly 5% in the Pollytix survey, and the SPD at 7%, leaving little room for error. The election takes place on September 6.