The far-right party Alternative for Germany, or AfD, was projected to win a strong victory in a regional election on Sunday, in a major blow to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's center-right party, the Christian Democratic Union.Merz's party was projected to be hit with a disastrous result in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.AfD had sought to form the country’s first far-right state government since the end of World War II in 1945, although it was not immediately clear whether it would be able to fulfill that ambition.Ulrich Siegmund, AfD's anti-migration candidate for governor, said that "we have written history."ANTI-MIGRANT AFD SEEKS TO BREAK GERMANY'S POLITICAL 'FIREWALL' IN HISTORIC STATE ELECTIONTop candidate Ulrich Siegmund shows thumbs up beside party leaders Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel, from left, at an AfD election party after the Saxony-Anhalt state elections.(AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)Siegmund, 35, told public broadcaster ARD that voters had sent a message that "things cannot carry on like this," adding that it was "also a signal toward Berlin.""A very good campaigner for us in this election campaign was Friedrich Merz.
Every day this man is in the chancellery is one too many," he said of Germany's unpopular leader.The election comes amid widespread public discontent with the national government, which has yet to convince many voters it can get the country's sluggish economy back on track.AfD aimed for an absolute majority in the state legislature to govern on its own and overcome the so-called firewall of mainstream parties’ refusal to work with it.But it was unclear long after polls closed whether that goal would become reality."AfD is a right-wing extremist party.
It wants to leave the euro; that would be economic downfall ...it works closely together with Russia, it wants a completely different social model," said Franziska Hoppermann, the national general-secretary of Merz's party.
"We will not work with them."Achieving its first stat...