The electoral earthquake of Saxony-Anhalt has turned the German strategy towards AfD into a political experiment of European scope. The far-right formation exceeds 44% in the latest projections from ARD, compared to the 20.8% it obtained in 2021. The CDU, which then reached 37.1%, now falls to approximately 18%.
AfD has grown, therefore, more than 23 points in five years despite the Brandmauer, the political wall through which the CDU and the rest of the major German parties refuse to incorporate it into their governments. The temptation to conclude that the sanitary cordon has caused this rise is immediate. The comparative data, however, do not allow establishing that causal relationship.
The available evidence leads to a less straightforward answer. A sanitary cordon can be effective in preventing a formation from coming to power and at the same time, be unable to reduce its electoral support. Breaking it also does not guarantee that its voters will return to the traditional parties.
The first problem: what it means for a sanitary cordon to "work"
Under the same expression, different political mechanisms are grouped. In Germany or Portugal, the cordon fundamentally consists of excluding certain parties from government agreements. In Belgium, it also extends to political cooperation with Vlaams Belang. In France, it takes another form: withdrawal of candidates and concentration of votes in second rounds to prevent a victory for the far right.
That is why two apparently contradictory results can occur. A party can spectacularly increase its votes and still not govern. Electorally, the cordon has not reduced it. Institutionally, it has fulfilled its objective.
Saxony-Anhalt precisely represents that paradox. AfD has achieved its best historical result in a regional election, but the CDU's refusal to negotiate with it may keep it out of government if parliamentary arithmetic allows for building an alternative majority. The main parties continue to rule out a coalition with AfD.
Germany: AfD doubles, but there is no proof that the cordon is the cause
The German evolution is probably the strongest argument against the idea that it is enough to isolate the far right electorally to make it disappear.
AfD obtained 20.8% in Saxony-Anhalt in 2021 and now hovers around 44%. In the federal elections of 2025, it also approximately doubled its previous result and became the second national force.
But there is a fact that complicates the thesis that Germans are voting for AfD as a reaction to the cordon. In August, the ZDF Politbarometer showed that 61% of Germans considered the CDU's refusal to cooperate with AfD correct, compared to 37% who rejected it. Among CDU/CSU voters themselves, support for the cordon reached 72%. The growth of AfD coexists, therefore, with a majority support for its exclusion from the Government.
There is another explanation that appears strongly in the data from Saxony-Anhalt. In July, 36% of citizens attributed to AfD the greatest capacity to solve the main problems of the state, compared to only 16% who chose the CDU. Five years earlier, that relationship was practically the opposite: the CDU reached 40% and AfD 9%.
This indicates a deeper change than the sanitary cordon. AfD has ceased to function solely as a protest vote for a considerable part of the electorate and has acquired a perception of political competence.
Portugal: the cordon works for the Government, but Chega multiplies
Portugal offers one of the clearest examples to separate power and votes. Luís Montenegro has maintained his refusal to govern with Chega. André Ventura's party remains outside the national Executive. In that sense, the isolation has worked.
Electorally, the picture is completely different. Chega obtained 1.29% in the 2019 legislative elections. It rose to 7.18% in 2022, to 18.07% in 2024, and to 22.76% in 2025. In six years it went from one deputy to 60 and became the main opposition force in terms of seats.
It is difficult to use Portugal as proof that the cordon electorally reduces the far right. During the period in which Chega has remained excluded from the Government, its percentage has multiplied by more than 17.
Belgium: the same cordon has coexisted with the sinking and the rise
The Belgian case allows for an even more interesting comparison because the political instrument hardly changes and the electoral result does.
Vlaams Belang has been subjected to the sanitary cordon of the major Belgian parties for decades. In the 2014 Flemish Parliament elections, it fell to 5.92%. Ten years later, with the cordon still in effect, it reached 22.66% and was just 1.2 points away from N-VA.
It is a particularly relevant fact for establishing causality. If the cordon were solely responsible for the growth of the extreme right, it is difficult to explain how the same strategy coexisted first with an electoral collapse and then with a recovery of almost 17 points.
Belgium also provides one of the few available experimental proofs. Laura Jacobs and Jean-Benoit Pilet conducted an experiment with 3,270 participants in Flanders. Some were shown N-VA accepting to govern with Vlaams Belang and others rejecting it.
The willingness to vote for Vlaams Belang was significantly greater when N-VA accepted to govern with it. The effect was especially clear among voters motivated by programmatic issues. That is, in that experiment, lifting the cordon increased the electoral acceptance of the extreme right instead of reducing it.
France: Le Pen grows, but the republican front has indeed closed off power
France allows us to observe the other effect of the cordon. Marine Le Pen obtained 33.90% against Emmanuel Macron in the second round of the presidential election in 2017. Five years later, she reached 41.45%. The growth occurred despite the concentration of votes from other political spaces around the candidate competing against her.
Once again, the mechanism did not prevent the extreme right from growing electorally. But in the 2024 legislative elections, something different happened. More than 200 candidates from the center and the left who had come in third withdrew before the second round to reduce triangular elections and concentrate the vote against the Rassemblement National. The RN had clearly won the first round and aspired to an absolute majority. It did not achieve it.
The French case probably shows the clearest way in which a cordon can function: it does not necessarily decrease the number of citizens willing to vote for the extreme right, but it modifies the conversion of those votes into institutional power.
What happens when the cordon is broken? The Netherlands also does not offer an easy answer
The opposing argument holds that the best way to weaken an anti-system force is to allow it to govern and force it to be accountable for its results.
The Netherlands provides a recent case favorable to that hypothesis, although it also does not allow it to be turned into a general law.
The PVV of Geert Wilders won the 2023 elections with 37 deputies and subsequently entered for the first time into the governmental majority that supported the Executive of Dick Schoof. Wilders ended up withdrawing his party in June 2025 and caused the fall of the Government.
In the following elections, the PVV dropped from 37 to 26 seats. Analysts attributed part of the setback to its performance during the governmental stage, to the loss of its status as an outsider, and to the fragmentation of the radical right space.
Governing had a cost. The difficulty lies in knowing how much corresponded to the mere entry into the institutions, how much to the functioning of that Executive, and how much to Wilders' decisions.
Austria demonstrates that governing can punish, but does not immunize the system
The Austrian FPÖ reached the Government after obtaining 25.97% in the 2017 elections. After the coalition's breakup and the Ibiza scandal, it fell to 16.2% in 2019.
It seemed the perfect example of the theory that making the far right govern ends up exhausting it. Five years later, already from the opposition, the FPÖ won the general elections of 2024 with 28.8%, its best national result up to that moment.
The experience of government can impose an electoral cost. It does not guarantee that this punishment is permanent.
Spain also does not demonstrate that the absence of a cordon automatically boosts Vox
Spain has never had a national cordon comparable to the German. The PP has reached agreements with Vox and the formation participated in several regional governments.
Vox obtained 15.08% in the general elections of November 2019 and dropped to 12.38% and 33 deputies in 2023. In July 2024, it abandoned five coalition regional executives with the PP due to the conflict over the distribution of migrant minors.
Here too, there is no mechanical relationship according to which integrating the far right inevitably produces its growth or its sinking.
So, does the sanitary cordon make the far right grow?
The available data does not allow affirming it.
Germany, Portugal, Belgium, and France demonstrate that the far right can grow a lot while remaining isolated from the Government. That is enough to rule out that the sanitary cordon is, by itself, an effective tool to reduce its vote.
But the reverse conclusion is also not supported. We do not know what percentage AfD would have reached in Germany without the Brandmauer. The available experiments even show that normalizing the possibility of governing with an extreme right formation can increase its electoral appeal.
The evidence points to a fairly clear distinction. The cordon sanitaire works better as an institutional instrument than as an electoral strategy: it can prevent a party from transforming its votes into power while an alternative majority exists, but it does not resolve the reasons why those citizens vote for it.
Saxony-Anhalt takes this contradiction to an unknown point in Germany. AfD has gone from 20.8% to over 44% and continues, for now, against a wall that a majority of Germans still supports. The question that arises after these elections is no longer solely how much AfD can grow outside of government. It is how long an alternative majority system can be maintained when the party behind the cordon approaches one in every two votes.