In recent months, Ulrich Siegmund has been whizzing through towns and villages on a light blue Simson moped, a model from the GDR era that has gained cult status.
He smiles, shakes hands and makes fiery speeches. At election rallies, Siegmund talks about his vision for Saxony-Anhalt, a state with just over two million inhabitants located in a triangle between Berlin, Leipzig and Hanover. The party wants to fundamentally overhaul migration policy, invest in more Russian language teaching in schools and "good relations" with Moscow, scrap wind turbine construction and close down public service media.
He also takes the opportunity to sign copies of the news magazine Der Spiegel, which in August put the AfD politician on the cover with the text "Germany's most dangerous man" - an edition that has become a collector's item.
Over 40 percent
Sunday's election could be historic. For the first time, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) has a realistic chance of filling the position of minister-president, head of government, in a German state.
Ulrich Siegmund is confident of victory.
The sun rises in the east, but will shine over all of Germany, he repeats time and again during the election campaign.
Since May, the AfD has been above 40 percent in opinion polls in Saxony-Anhalt, well ahead of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats (CDU), which have governed the state since 2002.
Depending on how many of the other parties get over the five percent threshold, the result could be enough for a majority of its own, although it is far from certain.
Even in national polls, the AfD has been the largest party in recent months.
With his campaign slogan "everything is possible," Siegmund manages to engage voters who feel that most things have gotten worse and that politicians are not doing much about it. Not least on the immigration issue, where the party wants to carry out a "deportation and repatriation offensive" to increase security.
"Completely indifferent"
At the same time, researchers and political opponents are sounding the alarm about the risks of an election victory for the AfD. The German security service classifies the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt as far-right, and several of Siegmund's close associates have backgrounds in a now-banned neo-Nazi organization.
The AfD in Saxony-Anhalt is one of Europe's most extreme far-right parties with realistic claims to government power, extremism researcher Matthias Quent tells Tagesschau.
Siegmund himself is "completely indifferent" to what happened 20 or 30 years ago, he says in Der Spiegel.
I look forward.
Saxony-Anhalt is one of Germany's smaller states in terms of population, with 2.1 million people. The capital is Magdeburg, which is located roughly halfway between Berlin and Hanover.
Before German reunification, the area belonged to the GDR, then mainly divided into the districts (Bezirk) of Magdeburg and Halle.
Since 2016, Saxony-Anhalt has been a stronghold for the Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Alternative for Germany (AfD) was founded in 2013, focusing on the consequences of the euro crisis, which was considered to have been mishandled by the Merkel government.
The party quickly gained a boost in public opinion but failed to enter the Bundestag that same year.
In 2015, a new party program was adopted, in which opposition to immigration and criticism of Islam were given a more prominent place.
Since then, the political orientation has become increasingly radical and in several states the party is monitored by the security services after being classified as far-right and deemed to pose a threat to democracy.
In the 2025 federal election, the AfD received 20.8% of the vote and, according to opinion polls, the party is now by a wide margin the largest among German voters.
