I'm working on a two-part post keyed to the 25th anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks. I was originally going to publish Part 1 on Tuesday, but I also thought I should weigh in on the regional German election in Saxony-Anhalt. So I've written the short post below on that topic. The two-part post on September 11 will be coming on Wednesday and Friday. Enjoy a rare three-post week at Notes from the Middleground! All the polls foretold it: The right-populist party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has won a plurality of the vote in the former East German state of Saxony-Anhalt by a very wide margin: 43.8 percent, with the second place center-right party (CDU) coming in at 17.2 percent. Yet the AfD also fell just short of winning an outright majority of the vote'an outcome that would have empowered the right populists to form a government without requiring the support of any other party. (The AfD appears on track to hold 39 out of the 83 seats in the state parliament, three...
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