2021 Saxony-Anhalt state election
The 2021 Saxony-Anhalt state election was held on 6 June 2021 to elect the 8th Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt. The outgoing government was coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Social Democratic Party (SPD), and The Greens, led by Minister-President Reiner Haseloff.
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All 97 seats in the Landtag of Saxony-Anhalt (including 14 overhang and leveling seats) 49 seats needed for a majority | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Turnout | 1,079,045 (60.3%) 0.8% | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Results for the single-member constituencies | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The CDU won an unexpectedly strong 37.1% of votes, an increase of 7.4 percentage points. The opposition Alternative for Germany (AfD) finished on 20.8%, a decline of 3.4 percentage points. The Left and SPD each suffered their worst ever results in the state, recording 11.0% and 8.4% respectively. The Free Democratic Party (FDP), which narrowly failed to re-enter the Landtag in 2016, won 6.4% of votes and 7 seats. The Greens finished on an unexpectedly low 5.9%, only a slight improvement from their previous result.
Going in to the election, the CDU trailed the AfD in some polls, with most others showing a neck-to-neck race, with the CDU sitting at around 30 % support. The unexpected CDU sweep – improving their 2016 result and winning a plurality in every district of the state, though they narrowly lost the Zeitz constituency – was largely attributed to the personal popularity of long-time Minister-President Haseloff, who, at the time, was the Minister-President with the highest favorability ratings. This allowed him to carry the CDU to victory against the poor showing in the polls of the federal CDU, largely resulting from developments in their campaign in the then-upcoming federal election. The AfDs leader Oliver Kirchner on the other hand was barely known to the public, with polls showing he would garner single-digit support if the Minister-President was elected directly.
On 6 July, the CDU, SPD, and FDP began coalition negotiations. The three parties presented a draft coalition agreement on 9 August, which was later approved by each party's membership. Haseloff was re-elected Minister-President on 16 September on the second ballot in the Landtag.
The coalition, dubbed "Germany coalition" due to the coalition parties colors, was übergroß, since the CDU and SPD alone would have held a single-seat majority in the Landtag. The last übergroß coalition, popular in times of crises, for example in West Berlin in the post-WWII years, was formed in Hamburg in 1970. The gamble paid off, since the Landtag didn't elect Haseloff on the first ballot, which some commentators attributed to right-wing dissent within the CDU faction.