Saxony has repeatedly been in the public eye in recent years. Marches by neo-Nazis and “angry citizens,” electoral successes of far-right parties like the National Democratic Party (NPD) and Alternative for Germany (AfD), as well as ongoing protest events in the streets, have created the image of a stronghold of resentment, populism, and disillusionment with democracy. However, studies indicate that the state’s political culture is not fundamentally unique compared to other parts of Eastern Germany and Europe but is instead shaped by internal regional differences. Against this backdrop, the paper analyzes political attitudes in Saxony, focusing on satisfaction with democracy, trust in its institutions, as well as related sentiments and opinions. Drawing on recent data obtained from the ‘Saxony Monitor’ in 2021/22 and the Mercator Forum Migration and Democracy (MIDEM) at TU Dresden the paper also identifies key factors to explain these characteristics of the state’s local political culture. We find that negative attitudes towards democracy in Saxony strongly depend on subjective experiences of deprivation—feelings of lacking political efficacy, facing potential social decline, and experiencing cultural domination. These sentiments are partly rooted in biographical experiences during the period of transformation after 1989. The widespread desire for an alternative form of democracy, based on ‘direct democratic’ instruments of participation, is also driven by dissatisfaction with current representative decision-making processes. Strong forms of ethnocentric self-reference, extremist orientations, as well as regional characteristics, reinforce existing tendencies of criticism toward democracy. Interestingly, it is not urban areas with their social hotspots, nor rural regions with their stronger influence of religious communities, that exhibit the most noticeable trends towards mistrust and democratic disenchantment in Saxony, but rather medium-sized towns and smaller cities.