Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) is heading for a big victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, far ahead of its mainstream rivals, according to incomplete results. Projections indicate it is set to fall short of a majority, but the AfD says it has won a mandate to govern.

The far-right AfD is set to win a record 44% of the vote, well ahead of the conservative CDU on just over 17%.

The AfD’s charismatic leader in the state, Ulrich Siegmund, said it was “sensational” and they wanted to start governing as soon as possible.

No far-right party has won control of a German state since World War Two, and governing at state level would mean powers over policing, local education and culture.

Saxony-Anhalt has a small population of 2.1 million and the AfD in the state is assessed by domestic intelligence as “right-wing extremist”, a classification rejected by Siegmund, 35.

With more than 90% votes in, the AfD is set to score higher than earlier opinion polls suggested, and Siegmund along with joint national leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla were overjoyed as the news emerged.

Commentators and political opponents spoke of the outcome as a watershed and break with the past. Main TV channel Das Erste cancelled its legendary crime drama Tatort to focus on what the result meant.

“This isn’t just about Saxony-Anhalt,” Siegmund told supporters. “It’s a signal for the whole of Germany – a self-confident signal.”

US President Donald Trump posted a screenshot of the German TV projection on his Truth Social platform, and then Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev took a screengrab of Trump’s post and praised a “historic win for the pragmatic AfD”.

Dmitriev had earlier praised the Russia-friendly AfD as “the party of hope and reason, co-operation truth and hope for Germany”. Ahead of Germany’s federal election last year, US Vice-President JD Vance endorsed the party, in a move criticised in Germany as political interference.

The AfD’s leaders will not know if they have enough seats to govern until they see which of the smaller parties get into the state parliament. Siegmund has so far refused to lead a minority government, but the party’s national leaders see it as a possibility.

“If necessary there’ll just be new elections, then we’d just get 50 or 55%,” said Siegmund, while saying he was prepared to work with individual MPs or a party.

A big question-mark hangs over whether one populist left-wing party, BSW, gets over the 5% threshold needed to enter parliament.

If BSW fails, then the AfD’s chances of a majority increase. If they get in, the AfD is currently heading for 39 seats in the 83-seat state parliament.

A crowd of supporters at the AfD election night party HQ erupted in cheers as the projections came up on the screen.

A short while later, people burst into singing Germany’s national anthem.

“We have made history in this state,” Siegmund said. His opposite number in the CDU, Sven Schulze, conceded victory and said his party would have to deal with the result: “This was an extremely tough and intensive election campaign.”

Germany’s centre-left SPD described the outcome as “truly dramatic” and national leader Lars Klingbeil, whose party is in government nationally with the CDU, described the outcome as a “signal to Berlin” and he was adamant that they would hear it.

AfD stands for Alternative für Deutschland and it openly pro-Russia and anti-migration. It has not only dominated the election campaign, it is emerging as the dominant force in the result as well. Although the outcome was initially unclear, the party’s supporters believe they are on the march.

Turnout in Saxony-Anhalt was particularly high at an estimated 78%, and AfD supporters in Magdeburg praised Siegmund’s success in winning over voters.

One man called Ollie said: “This man gives us what no-one else can give.”

“No matter what government, they all just promise things to get better. This is a party for the working people. It is the alternative for Germany,” he told the BBC.

Another AfD voter called Bert said people in the east could sense things were not going well: “Things need to improve for us, for my family – I have three children. I’m in fear, I’m really in fear that safety erodes more and more.”

Other parties refuse to go into coalition with the AfD, operating a Brandmauer or firewall aimed at keeping the far right out of government. In Saxony-Anhalt, the BSW has offered to co-operate with the AfD on some issues if it gets into the state parliament.

The AfD leads the opinion polls nationally, ahead of the ruling conservatives of Chancellor Friedrich Merz and the Social Democrats, but their heartland lies in the eastern states.

They also won the 2024 state election in neighbouring Thuringia, but failed to secure enough seats to win power.

Among the AfD’s policies is a highly controversial plan for “remigration”, which is widely understood to mean mass deportations of migrants, although the party says it refers to deporting criminals and those in the country illegally. It would not be able to achieve either if it ran the government of one of 16 states.

But it would have significant local powers. The party has been particularly critical of the Bauhaus school of design which the Nazis shut down in the city of Dessau in Saxony-Anhalt after they came to power in 1933. The AfD has called it “the dead-end of modernism”, prompting some to accuse the party of using similar language to the Nazis.

Nikita, a demonstrator at an anti-AfD “Democracy Festival” in Magdeburg on the eve of the vote said Germans had to “learn from our history and not go back. We don’t want the dark times any more”.

Responding to the news from Saxony-Anhalt, the veteran head of the Jewish community in Munich and Bavaria, Charlotte Knobloch, said it frightened her. “On days like this I find it hard to recognise my homeland any more,” the 93-year-old Holocaust survivor said, appealing for mainstream parties not to stand by and allow “this decline”.

One of the AfD’s top figures in Saxony-Anhalt, Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, has also been criticised for his approach to Russia. When asked why he had a Russian army mug in his office, he said it was just a souvenir, and “it’s not our war”.