The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has set a target of winning 40% or more of the vote in Saxony’s state parliament elections on September 1.
“It is possible that we will govern only in Saxony,” AfD Secretary General Jan Zwerg said at the start of the election campaign in the Saxon capital Dresden. From now on, his party will go on the hunt, he said.
In the European elections, the AfD became the largest party in Saxony with 31.8%.
Opinion polls for the state elections currently show a neck-and-neck race with the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), with a narrow lead for the AfD.
Leading candidate Jörg Urban spoke of a tailwind for the state elections. “Here in the east, here in Saxony, we can make a breakthrough,” he told his supporters. His party no longer wants to be in opposition, but wants to govern, he said.
“We don’t want a piece of the pie, we want the bakery,” Urban said.
The Saxon AfD state association is categorized by the Saxony domestic intelligence service as a confirmed far-right movement. The party is fighting against this in legal ways.
