Will the Brandmauer survive intact?
Will a minority government emerge?
Will new negotiations produce an unexpected coalition?
Or will the AfD remain the largest party while being excluded from the executive branch?
At the moment, those questions remain unresolved.
What is already clear, however, is that German politics has entered unfamiliar territory.
Chancellor Merz now faces a serious political challenge. The result is not merely a defeat for one regional CDU organization. It raises questions about whether the federal government is succeeding in convincing voters that it can address the economic and social problems driving support toward the AfD.
The timing could hardly be worse for the CDU.
A strong AfD result gives the party additional momentum ahead of future elections and provides its leadership with a powerful political narrative: that the German establishment is losing touch with ordinary voters.
AfD leaders can now argue that millions of Germans are demanding a fundamental political change.
The mainstream parties, meanwhile, have to explain why voters are increasingly abandoning them.
That is the central battle.
And it will not be solved simply by warning voters about the AfD.
If mainstream politicians want to reverse the trend, they will have to address the underlying reasons why people are voting for it.
That means immigration.
It means economic competitiveness.
It means energy prices.
It means public services.
It means housing.
It means security.
It means the relationship between eastern and western Germany.
And it means restoring confidence that democratic institutions are capable of delivering practical results.
This is where the future of the Brandmauer becomes especially important.
Keeping the AfD outside government may remain the position of Germany’s established parties. But political barriers are only sustainable when the parties behind them remain electorally strong enough to construct alternative majorities.
Saxony-Anhalt demonstrates what happens when that assumption begins to break down.
The AfD can win nearly half the vote without necessarily controlling the government.
That creates a political contradiction at the heart of Germany’s democracy: electoral strength and governmental power are no longer automatically aligned.
The coming weeks will reveal whether that contradiction can be resolved without fundamentally changing Germany’s political system.