Election shockwave: Meet the smiling new leader set to bring hard-right upheaval to Germany

London: German politician Ulrich Siegmund has surged to success with a simple promise to return his community to the more comfortable times of the past.

“We want our good, old, safe Germany back at last,” was one of his most common refrains when urging voters to back him to lead the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Voters responded with a thumping endorsement for Siegmund and the party he leads, the Alternative für Deutschland, known as the AfD.

Exit polls showed the AfD gained 44.5 per cent of the vote when the polling stations closed at 6pm on Sunday (Monday AEST).

The outcome left no doubt about the will of the people, given that the next major contender won only 18.5 per cent of the vote. This result, for the Christian Democratic Union, was a brutal rebuff to the foremost conservative party in the country.

It was also another sign of the way the public has turned against the CDU’s national leader, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, as he struggles to deliver on promises to bring better times to the country.

For Siegmund, the result looks like a mandate to form government.

His promises to bring back the olden times, however, look dangerous and divisive to opponents, who believe the AfD leans so far to the right that it is akin to a Nazi party.

Siegmund, 35, a telegenic former salesman, looks nothing like the extremists of the past who have frightened voters with their black shirts and Nazi salutes.

He was often photographed during the campaign with a smile on his face at campaign stops when he turned up on a blue scooter.

His policies, however, offer radical change when Germany is divided over migration and national security, while suffering from slow growth and long-term threats to giant manufacturing businesses such as carmakers.

The AfD agenda includes the deportation of refugees who do not have approval to stay in the country, free childcare and tax incentives to encourage larger families and boost the native population, and the restoration of trade with Russia to allow imports of oil and gas. It also wants to cut aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia; a halt to funding for public broadcasters, a ban on gay pride flags at schools, and funding cuts for teaching “woke” subjects.

With his likely victory on Sunday, Siegmund has become the most successful hard-right politician in Germany since the country formed its modern democracy from the ashes of the Second World War and the destruction of the National Socialist party and its leader, Adolf Hitler.

Germany’s domestic intelligence agency has labelled the AfD as an “extremist” organisation, while some of its early leaders have been exposed for their links to neo-Nazi group in the past.

Asked about the murders of 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, some AfD leaders have hedged in their language rather than categorically denounce the crimes of the past.

When Siegmund was asked about the Holocaust by news site Politico earlier this year, he said he could not “presume to judge” whether it was humanity’s worst-ever crime.

One of Germany’s biggest magazines, Der Spiegel, called Siegmund “the most dangerous man in Germany” in a cover story in August.

Siegmund was born in Eastern Germany in 1990 and moved to Berlin in his early years where he set up a business selling household air fresheners.

His first move into politics was to join the Christian Democratic Union, but he shifted to the hard right in 2014 by joining the AfD, then in an early phase when it was commonly dismissed as a minor party with neo-Nazi leanings and therefore unelectable as a major force in politics.

The COVID-19 pandemic increased Siegmund’s profile when he became popular on social media with his complaints about social restrictions.

The election outcome is a serious blow to Merz, although not a surprise due to his poor personal polling over the past year.

Siegmund described Merz as an asset for the AfD.

“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.

The next step for the CDU is to take stock and consider whether Merz should remain leader, but the next election for the national parliament, the Bundestag, is not until 2029.

The vote in Saxony-Anhalt was not a national ballot on Merz. The state, part of what was East Germany, is relatively small. There were only about 1.7 million registered voters at the election.

Even so, this is a shock for Germany. For the AfD, the next step is to form government. The country will have a hard-right government for the first time in its post-war democracy.

Dismissed as a minor party for so long, the AfD is now a major force in German politics. The upheaval in Germany may have only just begun.