With the 2025 Budget bill still featuring a gap of some €12 billion (US$13.25 billion), renewed coalition tensions are likely,
We are ready to take government responsibility,
We very much hope that we can eventually get a good government with the CDU — probably also with the [center-left] SPD,
For us it's going to be about asserting ourselves more strongly,
We need change and change will only come with the AfD,
If you add up the vote share of the AfD and BSW, you come to over 40 per cent in Thuringia and Saxony. And that is frightening because it shows that the democratic parties of the centre... have shrunk significantly,
If there is no political implementation, no real changes, no reforms, voters can say the political process has been hijacked by the elites,
The issue will become more fraught, and Germany will likely become more paralysed, meaning others like Poland, France and Italy will need to set the pace,
That has never happened before in German history,
The voters want the AfD in government
I am not fighting the conservatives. I am not fighting the BSW. I am fighting the normalisation of fascism,
This is a historic success for us,
An openly right-wing extremist party has become the strongest force in a state parliament for the first time since 1949, and that causes many people very deep concern and fear,
Please stop stigmatizing me. We are the No. 1 party in Thuringia. You don't want to classify one-third of the voters in Thuringia as right-wing extremist."
We are not a Right-wing extremist party."
As the CDU, we see this as an opportunity for political change under the leadership of the CDU,
How long can the CDU leadership keep up their policy of going against their base?"
But one thing is certain: with many discussions and the will to do something for this state, we can succeed in using this election result to give Saxony a stable government that serves the state and leads the way with humility,
In its election campaigns, the AfD very effectively tapped into an experience that is widely shared among east Germans,
East Germany too claimed for itself to have found a democratic response to national socialism,