On Sunday morning a motorcycle stopped in front of the polling station in Tangermünde. A polling station is the place where people vote. A small crowd was waiting, and the people began to cheer. Ulrich Siegmund got off the motorcycle. He went inside with his wife Julia and voted. Then he came out and took selfies with everybody who asked. He said he felt that people were hopeful that day, and that Germany must stop fighting about politics. He also said before that he would only take the job of state governor if his party won more than half of the votes.
In the evening the first results came from Magdeburg. Siegmund’s party, Alternative for Germany, got 43.8 per cent. This is the party’s best result in any German state, and it is two times more than five years ago. The Christian Democrats of Friedrich Merz came second with 17.2 per cent, their worst result ever in this state. The Social Democrats got 9.3 per cent, the Greens 8.9 and the Left Party 8.6.
At the party celebration, 77 per cent of people had voted. People waved German flags and hugged each other. Siegmund said that they had made history in this country, and that people wanted political change with his party. Donald Trump put a photo of the result on his website, but he wrote nothing.
Siegmund was born in Havelberg in October 1990. He studied business. When he was 23, he started a company and sold air fresheners. He became famous on the internet during the pandemic because he was against the corona rules. He always smiles, and his slogan says that everything will be fine. People waited a long time for a selfie with him.
His party wants to send migrants without papers back very fast. It wants harder rules for asylum and no state money for integration programmes. It also wants the German flag in schools every day, and no new wind farms. All the other big parties say no to working with this party.
On Monday Merz said that everybody was deeply shocked. He said it was his party’s worst defeat in many years, and nobody expected this result.
At the celebration in Magdeburg, a man named Antony Lee said that Germany needs change. He said he was a father and a businessman, and that things could not go on like this.