The 2024 Saxony state election was held on 1 September 2024 to elect members to the 8th Landtag of Saxony. It was held on the same day as the 2024 Thuringian state election. Going into the election, the state government was led by Michael Kretschmer of the CDU as Minister-President, in a coalition with the Greens and the SPD.
The CDU remained the largest party with slight losses, followed closely by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) which obtained its best ever result. The SPD remained steady while the Greens fell to just over 5% of the vote; the incumbent coalition lost its majority. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance ran for the first time and won 12% and fifteen seats. The Left fell below the 5% electoral threshold but retained its representation in the Landtag after winning two direct constituencies. The Free Voters of Saxony (FW) elected a single member after lead candidate Matthias Berger won the constituency of Leipzig-Land III.
Background.
The 2019 election was marked by high gains for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which gained almost 28 percent of the vote and became the second strongest force. After losses, the CDU ended up with almost 32 percent as the strongest party ahead of the AfD. The Left and the SPD received 10.4 and 7.7 percent of the vote, respectively. The Greens increased and achieved their best result in a state election in Saxony with 8.6 percent, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) again missed entering parliament with 4.5 percent.
Aftermath.
The first announcement of the seat distribution, which was early in the morning of 2 September, showed 42 seats for CDU, 41 for AfD, 9 for SPD, and 6 for the Greens. Later in the morning, the state electoral committee announced there had been an error in calculating the seat distribution: one seat was deducted from CDU's and AfD's blocs, and one seat was added to SPD's and Greens' blocs. The committee blamed a software bug that resulted in the 117th through 120th seats being allocated incorrectly. External observers initially speculated that the seat distribution was mistakenly calculated with the D'Hondt method, even though the Sainte-Laguë method was to replace it beginning with this election; administrators denied this and stated it was a coincidence that the incorrect seat distribution matched the D'Hondt method's result. Notably, the loss of this one seat denied AfD a "Sperrminorität" ("blocking minority") that would have given it veto power over certain parliamentary actions requiring a two-thirds majority, such as judicial appointments and constitutional amendments, even if it is not in government.
Saxony has a version of the "Grundmandatsklausel" ("basic mandate clause") that is present in federal elections, which grants full proportional seating to parties that win two constituency seats even if they do not reach the electoral threshold of 5% of party-list votes. This enabled Die Linke, which received only 4.5% of party-list votes, to win list seats and receive representation in parliament proportionate to its vote share.
Electoral fraud investigations.
The State Criminal Police Office is prosecuting a case of suspected electoral fraud, in which 111 mail ballots in Dresden, 14 in Radeberg, and one in Dohna had their actual votes pasted over and replaced with votes for the right-wing extremist Free Saxony. Initial suspicions were raised after the postal voting district Langebrück-2/Schönborn in Dresden returned an unusually high result of 10.2% of votes for the party, which polled around 2% or less nearly everywhere else in the state. The Dresden and Bautzen electoral committees invalidated all of the modified ballots in their final canvasses of the results on 5 September. The state electoral committee decided this was sufficient and took no further action in its final canvass on 13 September.
Experts from TU Dresden later noticed the neighboring postal voting district Langebrück-1 had returned a similarly unusual figure of 13.4% in June 2024 local elections. Police confirmed that 154 manipulated postal ballots from that election were discovered. Michael Schleinitz, a 44-year-old Free Saxony member from Langebrück who was elected to its district council because of the modified ballots, was suspected of both cases. Schleinitz was arrested for electoral fraud and unrelated charges of attempted arson on 28 October.
Government formation.
After the elections in both Thuringia and Saxony, Sahra Wagenknecht, leader of the BSW, stated her preferences to go into a coalition with either the CDU and/or the SPD in an interview with ARD.
Though a right-wing CDU-AfD coalition would have a majority, the national CDU has prohibited any state faction from working with that party. Because of this, the only possible majority coalition was between the CDU, BSW and SPD, also known as the “blackberry coalition”.
Kretschmer met with Wagenknecht on 9 September "to explore possibilities for constructive political cooperation", with an eye toward beginning negotiations with BSW on the state level. Federal CDU leader Friedrich Merz appealed to nervous party members to trust Kretschmer and Mario Voigt in their respective negotiations, but reiterated that the party would refuse any cooperation or even discussions with AfD. Kretschmer admitted successful government formation would be a "major challenge" but repeatedly ruled out a minority government.
In a speech on 20 September, Merz described a potential coalition including BSW in either Saxony or Thuringia as "very, very, very unlikely", though with a stated goal of keeping AfD out of the Minister-President's office, he did not rule out other forms of cooperation with the party. Exploratory talks between CDU, BSW and SPD began on 23 September.
On 17 October, the three parties produced a report on the exploratory talks concluding that "constructive and solution-oriented cooperation for Saxony is possible". The parties' state executive committees will meet to vote on approving further negotiations in the following days. On 25 October, SPD suspended its participation in protest of several BSW MdLs voting with AfD to establish a parliamentary inquiry committee into the state government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic; they were resumed the following week after discussions among the parties' leadership.
On 5 November, BSW left the talks permanently and declared they had failed, citing that the parties had irreconcilable differences on the topics of state finances, migration and the War in Ukraine. The only possible remaining government was a CDU-led minority government or coalition, though Kretschmer repeatedly ruled it out. If a Minister-President is not elected in four months after the first sitting of the Landtag (a deadline of 1 February 2025), the state constitution requires a dissolution of the Landtag and new elections. 
Despite Kretschmer's previous statements, CDU and SPD leaders announced on 15 November they had begun negotiations toward forming a minority coalition. Kretschmer stated there would be a "consultation process" with the other parties, including AfD, before any legislation is introduced to ensure it has enough support to pass. BSW placed a commitment to halting cuts in social-welfare spending and a harder policy toward illegal migration as conditions of supporting the government. 
On 4 December, CDU and SPD announced they had completed a coalition agreement. The minority coalition has 51 seats, 10 short of a majority. The agreement was ratified by both parties and signed on 17 December.
The path to enough support for re-electing Kretschmer as Minister-President is unclear; The Left also conditioned it on reversing social-spending cuts, while the Greens categorically ruled it out after he sharply attacked them during the campaign. AfD stated they would only support a minority government if it were CDU alone.
Minister-President election.
The state constitution requires an absolute majority (61 of 120) for any Minister-President candidate on the first ballot. Any member may nominate a candidate. If no candidate succeeds, a second and final ballot is held where the candidate with the plurality of votes is elected. The election was scheduled for 18 December.
AfD leader Jörg Urban stood as a Minister-President candidate. Matthias Berger, the Free Voters leader who sits as an independent, also stood for election and proposed a technocratic government.
To prevent a potential repeat of the "Kemmerich moment", which prompted the 2020 Thuringian government crisis after he was elected Minister-President with unexpected AfD votes, the Greens proposed changing the rules to allow an explicit "against all" vote on the second ballot. The current rules provide yes or no options only when there is one candidate. If there are multiple candidates, members must vote for one of them or abstain. This proposal was made before both ballots and voted down both times.
References.
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