What time will the results come in?
First projections for Thuringia and Saxony, based on exit polls, are expected on Sunday evening at 6 p.m. Shortly after, the first projections based on the early vote count will be released. The final results are expected to become clear over the course of the night.
Who is likely to win?
In Thuringia, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party looks set for a first-place finish, now polling at just below 30 percent. That is despite the fact that the party is led by Björn Höcke, considered one of the most extreme politicians in the party and someone who has twice been found guilty by a German court of purposely employing Nazi rhetoric.
In Saxony, polls show the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) holding a slight lead over the AfD, but the race is still considered a toss-up.
Polls also suggest a new populist-left party founded by the leftist icon Sahra Wagenknecht will finish third in both Thuringia and Saxony — a remarkable result for a party founded only months ago — potentially putting the party in a kingmaker role when it comes to forming coalition governments.
Why are the stakes so high?
The rise of radical parties in eastern Germany will be seen as an unmistakable rebuke of Germany’s mainstream parties — and in particular German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s left-leaning, tripartite coalition government.
All three parties in Scholz’s coalition — the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the fiscally conservative Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Greens — are struggling to meet the 5-percent threshold needed to make it into the state parliaments. Should these parties fail to win a significant number of seats, it will prove a further embarrassment for an already-weak coalition struggling to stay intact.