BERLIN — Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives are mounting a high-stakes push to stem the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the eastern German region where the party is strongest.

The effort comes in a crowded year of elections — a Superwahljahr, or “super election year,” as Germans are calling it — that includes five state races and numerous local contests seen as key tests of the national mood, particularly as the AfD overtakes Merz’s governing conservatives in many polls.

Two of the state elections are taking place in eastern German states where the AfD is far ahead in polls and aiming to win significant governing power for the first since the party’s founding nearly 13 years ago.

AfD leaders are in particular zeroing in on the small eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, seeing in that largely rural part of the country their clearest path to real power, with polls showing the party at nearly 40 percent support there. It was in this state that veteran conservative premier Reiner Haseloff stepped down on Tuesday, handing the reins to party colleague Sven Schulze, the conservatives’ lead candidate in the state ahead of an election there set for Sept. 6.

Schulze is set to be elected as the new premier by the state’s parliament on Wednesday. The move is intended to boost Schulze’s profile ahead of the vote and amounts to a do-or-die tactical push on the part of the conservatives to curb the AfD’s rapid rise. If the AfD wins an absolute majority of parliamentary seats in Saxony-Anhalt in September — a result that is within reach for the party — it would mark the first time since the rise of the Nazis that a far-right party has amassed that kind of governing power in Germany.

Conservative leaders are depicting the political stakes as momentous.

“Either Sven Schulze becomes premier, or we’ll have a different country,” Haseloff said after announcing his decision to step down.

It’s unclear whether Schulze’s stint as premier ahead of the September election will provide a boost to the CDU, now polling second with about 26 percent support in the state. The politician, 46, formerly worked in sales for a mechanical engineering company, and depicts himself as a practical politician with the kind of tangible business experience needed to boost the local economy.

“The next few months should not just be about election campaigns,” Schulze recently told Germany’s Bild tabloid,  a sister publication of POLITICO in the Axel Springer Group. “This government — led by me as state premier — must also deliver results.”

For Merz, clear AfD victories in Saxony-Anhalt and beyond during his tenure would represent a major embarrassment. Before being elected chancellor nearly a year ago, the conservative leader largely staked his candidacy on a vow to stop the rise of the AfD. In an effort to do so — and win back voters who have defected to the AfD — Merz shifted his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) sharply to the right on migration. Historic far-right successes under his watch will be seen as proof that this strategy is failing.

AfD election wins would also put increasing pressure on his conservatives to agree to cooperate with the far-right party. Currently, conservatives and other mainstream parties maintain a so-called Brandmauer (firewall) around the AfD, refusing to govern in coalition with the far right. As a consequence, creating stable coalition governments in many eastern states is becoming exceedingly difficult as parties of radically differing politics band together to shut out the far right.

In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD has attacked the CDU move to give Schulze the premiership as a desperate pre-election gambit.

The AfD’s lead candidate in the state, Ulrich Siegmund, said the move constituted “a new level of lies” in a video post on X.  

“They are playing with the trust of the people in this country,” Siegmund said. “And why? Because apparently they no longer have any substantive arguments against us. Here in Saxony-Anhalt in particular, there is obviously a huge, an enormous fear that the AfD will come to power.”