German far-right AfD landslide winner in eastern state vote

MAGDEBURG, GERMANY:

Germany's far-right AfD won a landslide victory in a key regional election Sunday in the ex-communist east, according to exit polls, but it remain unclear whether it can win an absolute majority to govern.

"We have made history today," said a jubilant Ulrich Siegmund, the 35-year-old lead candidate of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party in Saxony-Anhalt state, as the vote count continued.

The AfD won at least 44 percent, more than doubling its support, and far ahead of the 18.5 percent for the centre-right CDU of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, according to projections by public broadcasters ARD and ZDF.

The CDU's state premier Sven Schulze called the outcome "a severe blow" but -- depending on the final count and the fate of smaller parties -- may still try to cobble together a multi-party coalition to cling to power.

All major parties have agreed on a "firewall" of non-cooperation with the AfD, whose state branch is categorised as "right-wing extremist" by Germany's domestic intelligence agency.

The AfD's national co-leader Alice Weidel -- who has long condemned the "firewall" concept as undemocratic -- praised her party's result as "sensational" and said that "we have received a very clear mandate to govern here".

"We will see what the rest of the evening brings and how things develop," she added as more ballots were being counted in the small state of 2.1 million people following a record voter turnout of at least 75 percent.

In a white-knuckle evening, the CDU's only hope would be to potentially forge an unwieldy coalition with a razor-thin margin together with the centre-left SPD and the Greens, and with the support of the far-left Die Linke party.

A wild card is whether the small BSW party -- economically leftist but veers hard right on immigration -- will cross the five-percent hurdle for re-entry into parliament, and whether it would then lend its support to the AfD.