The Alternative for Germany (AfD) tripled its share of the vote in Sunday’s local elections in Lower Saxony, climbing from 4.6 percent in 2021 to 15.9 percent, according to provisional results reported by Breitbart. The third-place finish marks a significant breakthrough for the sovereigntist, Eurosceptic party in a comparatively wealthy western state far from its traditional strongholds in eastern Germany.
Every other major party lost ground. The Christian Democrats (CDU), long the dominant force in the state, still finished first with 27 percent but shed nearly five points — their lowest result in Lower Saxony since the postwar period. The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) fared worse, dropping almost six points from the 30 percent they won at the last election.
AfD Declares Itself ‘Clear Winner of the Evening’
Ansgar Schledde, the AfD’s regional chairman in Lower Saxony, said Monday that the party was “the clear winner of the evening,” pointing out that it was the only major force to gain support — and to triple its vote in just five years. Schledde argued that attempts to hobble the party through legal means had backfired. The party is under investigation by the state’s political police, and four of its candidates were barred from running altogether over what authorities described as doubts about their loyalty to the constitution.
According to Die Welt, Schledde said those bans had convinced voters of the need for a “corrective” against what he characterized as anti-democratic behavior by state agents. The party’s gains in Lower Saxony suggest that even Germany’s safest governing-party territory is no longer immune to the right-wing insurgency.
National Repercussions
The results have once again shaken the fragile coalition in Berlin. Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s national government, composed of the CDU and SPD, now confronts the reality that both of its constituent parties have recorded their worst-ever results in Lower Saxony. National AfD leader Alice Weidel seized on the outcome, calling for a snap federal election.
“Given the coalition’s dismal state, new elections would be the cleanest solution from our perspective,” Weidel said. “The people must now decide who should lead the country out of this crisis.”
The blow to Merz was compounded by the reluctance of his own party’s regional chief to voice support for him. Sebastian Lechner, who leads the CDU in Lower Saxony, declined to say whether he backed the Chancellor, saying only that he was focused on the next round of elections and that “there must be political change in Berlin.”
A Season of Elections
Lower Saxony’s local elections are just one part of a busy German election season. The state will vote again later this month to select members of its state parliament, and next weekend brings further local elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin. The AfD’s performance in Lower Saxony is likely to intensify debate over the party’s growing appeal beyond its eastern base and the stability of the national coalition.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2026/09/14/germanys-sovereigntist-afd-triples-vote-in-lower-saxony-election-results/