Four CDU Votes Made AfD's Rausch Saxony-Anhalt Speaker. December Comes Next.
October 12, 2026 · Frisian News
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Four CDU lawmakers crossed their party's official non-cooperation policy to elect AfD politician Tobias Rausch as Saxony-Anhalt's state parliament president on October 6. Rausch has confirmed those same four deputies will back AfD's Ulrich Siegmund for minister-president in December, giving him a path to lead Germany's first AfD state government.
Four CDU lawmakers in Saxony-Anhalt voted for AfD politician Tobias Rausch as state parliament president on October 6, defying their leadership's recommendation to abstain. Rausch has now confirmed that those same four deputies have agreed to back AfD candidate Ulrich Siegmund for minister-president when the Landtag votes in December.
Speaking to Nius editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt on "Nius Live" the following day, Rausch gave a direct "yes" when asked whether CDU deputies had helped elect him. Asked whether the result signalled that Siegmund would safely take the premiership in December, Rausch replied: "That is to be assumed." He told the German press agency dpa there were explicit agreements with four CDU members covering the minister-president vote.
The vote count told much of the story before Rausch confirmed the rest. Tagesschau.de reports he received 48 of the 82 votes cast in the 83-seat Landtag in Magdeburg. AfD holds 39 seats. The five-member BSW bloc had declared its support in advance, giving Rausch a base of 44. The additional four votes came from elsewhere. The CDU leadership had formally recommended its 14 present deputies abstain. Tagesschau.de records only five abstentions in the chamber.
The vice-presidential vote the same afternoon reinforced the picture. AfD lawmaker Hans-Thomas Tillschneider, whom the BSW explicitly refused to back over his armaments positions, was elected deputy president with 44 votes, five more than AfD's own seat count, according to rmx.news. Acting premier Sven Schulze told MDR Sachsen-Anhalt his CDU caucus had voted as a bloc against Tillschneider. MDR's Lars Frohmüller wrote that the numbers cast doubt on that.
Three times in a single afternoon, Frohmüller noted, deputies voted against their leadership's stated position, twice for AfD candidates. The ballots were secret. According to Frohmüller, nobody knows which members defected, not even Schulze himself.
What this means for December is concrete. Siegmund needs at least 42 votes to become minister-president, rmx.news reports. AfD plus BSW gives him 44, if BSW backs him for that post, which it has not yet committed to. Four confirmed CDU defections give Siegmund a path to the state government without any formal coalition agreement. CDU/CSU parliamentary group chairman Thorsten Frei, quoted by rmx.news, called the situation "extremely concerning and worrying." Schulze declined to comment when dpa asked him about Rausch's claims.
The AfD won 43.8% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt's September 6 state election, tagesschau.de reports, but fell three seats short of a majority. The state branch has been classified as a confirmed right-wing extremist organisation by the Saxony-Anhalt domestic intelligence service since 2023, a classification the party is contesting in court. AfD national co-leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla called the result an end to the firewall mainstream parties have maintained against working with their party.
Schulze faces a CDU state party conference on December 5 with one question he cannot yet answer: how many of his own deputies are still with him.
Published October 12, 2026 · Frisian News