CDU weighs walkout from Saxony-Anhalt chamber before AfD premier vote
The CDU group in Saxony-Anhalt's Landtag decides on Tuesday, 13 October, whether its 15 members will leave the chamber together before the vote on the minister-president, to avoid suspicion that its ranks could back the AfD's Ulrich Siegmund.
The proposal
On Monday, 12 October 2026, the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt's Landtag said its executive board would recommend that the group's 15 members leave the plenary chamber together before the vote on the minister-president. Group chairman Sven Schulze and parliamentary business manager Stefan Ruland said the accusations against group members had crossed a line and that support for an AfD candidate remains ruled out. The group is due to decide on the proposal at its meeting on Tuesday, 13 October. The step is meant to remove any suspicion that CDU votes could help elect the AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund.
Why the suspicion arose
The trigger was the election of the Landtag president in the week of 5 October 2026. AfD member Tobias Rausch won with 48 yes votes, while the AfD and BSW together hold 44 seats. Schulze had announced that the CDU group would abstain as a bloc. Had the whole group abstained, including one member absent through illness, 14 abstentions would have been needed. In the end only five deputies abstained, and SPD, Greens and Left had said they would vote no. Asked whether CDU members had voted for him, Rausch answered yes, and said the same arrangement was agreed for Siegmund's election in December. He added that they would only be wiser once it happened.
- Tobias Rausch yes votes
- 48 count
- AfD and BSW combined seats
- 44 count
Dissent and reversal
Sepp Müller, who wants to succeed Schulze as CDU state chair at a party congress on 5 December, publicly backed the walkout. He wrote on the platform X that he expressly supports Ruland's proposal. Müller defended the step in these words:
Whoever does not hand in a ballot paper, nobody can later accuse them of anything.
The move reverses Ruland's earlier position. At the end of September he told Der Spiegel that the group would vote no in every ballot and would not leave the chamber, which he called a parliamentary impropriety. Müller also argued that the first step could create new common ground within the group, and that the decision lies with the faction.
Election timetable
The AfD currently plans the minister-president vote for mid-December 2026. The proposal covers the first and, if needed, second ballot, in which a candidate must win a majority of all Landtag members. In a third ballot, a majority of the votes cast is sufficient. The AfD is seeking support from the BSW and, by its own account, from individual deputies in other groups, while no party has said it wants to form a coalition with the AfD.
- Tobias Rausch elected Landtag president with 48 yes votes
- CDU executive board proposes group leave the chamber during the premier vote
- CDU parliamentary group to decide on the proposal at its meeting
- CDU party congress where Sepp Müller seeks the state chair post
- Planned minister-president election of Ulrich Siegmund
AfD reaction
In Berlin, the AfD's first parliamentary business manager Bernd Baumann greeted the possible walkout with calm. He described it as procedural tricks and rearguard actions by the Merz CDU, aimed at keeping the firewall against the AfD in place. He added:
These are ridiculous things. They should go ahead and do that. There may also be majorities beyond the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt. That does not irritate me in any way.
