If there was any need for proof of how much each vote counts, Lars Rohwer should have provided it on Sunday evening.

The CDU direct candidate in constituency 160, which includes part of the city of Dresden and the district of Bautzen, won the mandate at midnight with a wafer-thin lead of 39 votes in front of the AfD applicant Andreas Harlaß.

The latter had initially been clearly in the lead, as the rural communities were quickly counted.

But as the election offices of the state capital gradually reported their results, Rohwer pushed himself forward voice by voice.

Reinhard Bingener

Political correspondent for Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Bremen based in Hanover.

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Stefan Locke

Correspondent for Saxony and Thuringia based in Dresden.

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Konrad Schuller

Political correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung in Berlin.

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And yet the overall result of this federal election for the CDU in Saxony is extremely bitter.

She was only able to win four of the 16 constituencies on Sunday, fewer than ever since 1990. The AfD, on the other hand, won ten direct mandates.

With 24.6 percent, it became for the second time after 2017 - at that time it received 27 percent - in the federal election, the strongest force in the Free State.

The gap between the CDU and the CDU, which was wafer-thin four years ago, has grown to almost eight percentage points, and the Union only comes in third place with 17.2 percent, because the SPD also intervened with 19.3 percent and for the first time since 1990 in the Free State before the CDU lies.

The Social Democrats, like the Greens and the FDP, won votes, mostly from the CDU.

Because the AfD could not benefit directly from the weakness of the Union - it also lost around two and a half percentage points compared to 2017. The "alternative" has, as was also observed in the state elections two years ago, its potential, that of around one Quarter of the vote lies, exhausted.

The strength of the AfD is not least due to the weakness of the Union

And so the strength of the AfD in Saxony in this federal election is mainly due to the weakness of the others, especially the Union. Also in Thuringia, where the CDU lost massively, the AfD became the strongest force and won four of the eight direct mandates - including one against CDU country chief Christian Hirte. But it stuck with just under a quarter of the vote.

Because the AfD had hoped for significantly more, an open dispute broke out in the leadership on Monday. While the two top candidates Tino Chrupalla and Alice Weidel tried to portray the losses as a success, the federal chairman Jörg Meuthen criticized a joint press conference in Berlin. The dispute reflects the dispute over the direction of the party. While Meuthen wants to separate from the right-wing radicals, who are particularly strong in some East German state associations, Chrupalla and Weidel stand for the attempt to integrate the right-wing fringe.

The AfD lost 2.3 points in the federal election, but won a total of 16 direct mandates in Saxony, Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt.

Meuthen believes that Chrupalla's and Weidel's proximity to the right-wing extremists has pissed off voters, especially in the West, and therefore wants to emphasize the poor result.

On Monday he said that he would "not gloss over the fact that we have had a significant loss of votes".

Overall, the AfD had "not achieved a good result".

Weidel resisted by saying that she did not want the party's performance to be “bad-mouthed” by anyone.

She was “very, very satisfied” because the opponent had not succeeded in making the AfD a “one-shot”.

Chrupalla said he was "proud of the result" and "proud of the party".

The discussion about the "Dexit" divides the AfD 

Meuthen gave several reasons for the AfD's losses. He stated that the party had not succeeded in attracting new groups of voters. You have "served your own bubble very strongly", but with all other voters "considerable acceptance problems". With regard to the right wing of the party, which is particularly strong in East Germany, he added that it was the “epitome of the foolish” to turn the AfD into a “Lega Ost”. If you want to be successful, you have to be an alternative “for Germany” “and not an alternative for parts of Germany”.

In terms of content, the dissent was particularly evident in European politics.

In its election manifesto, the AfD calls for Germany to “leave” the EU, which is called “Dexit” in party German.

Meuthen thinks that's wrong.

On Monday, he said that many people had told him that, despite major criticism of the Union, they did not want to vote for a party that would demand exit from the European Union.

Chrupalla replied that this dissent "certainly exists".

He defended the exit course by saying that he had never heard from any voter that the AfD could not be voted "because of the Dexit decision".