AfD Wins Mecklenburg Vote, CDU Shut Out of Parliament

Germany’s far right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won state elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on Sunday, September 20, taking 38.2 percent of the vote, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) fell to 4.9 percent, dropping below the electoral threshold and losing every seat in a state parliament for the first time in the party’s history. Voters also went to the polls that same day in Berlin, where the far left party The Left took first place, also for the first time. The two votes on a single day dealt Merz a blow just two weeks after the AfD made a breakthrough in Saxony-Anhalt, and raised fresh questions about how long the current coalition between the CDU and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) can hold together at the federal level.

In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the AfD, led by former radio host Leif-Erik Holm, won 388,026 votes and 32 seats, eighteen more than in the previous election in 2021, when the party took 16.7 percent. Second place went to the SPD of state premier Manuela Schwesig, with 35.5 percent and 29 seats, five fewer than before. The Left won 6.5 percent and five seats, and the Greens took 5.7 percent, also winning five seats. The CDU, with 49,629 votes, or 4.9 percent, fell short of the five percent threshold needed to enter parliament, as did the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which won 4.8 percent. According to media that covered the vote, this is the CDU’s worst result in the party’s 81 year history. Turnout stood at 78.1 percent, 7.3 percentage points higher than in the 2021 election.

The state parliament in Schwerin has 71 seats. The SPD, The Left and the Greens together hold 39 seats, enough to form a majority without the CDU or the AfD. Although the AfD won the most votes, it remains outside government because the other parties have agreed not to work with it, a policy of isolating the far right that is well established in Germany’s party system.

In Berlin, The Left, led by Elif Eralp, the daughter of Turkish immigrants, won 25.7 percent of the vote and, for the first time in the party’s history, came out on top in the capital. The CDU placed second with 18.8 percent, the AfD came third with 16.3 percent, and the Greens were fourth with 14.3 percent. The SPD recorded its worst ever result in a Berlin parliamentary election, with 12.1 percent. To win the mayor’s office for the first time since Germany’s reunification in 1990, The Left will still need coalition partners. After the results were announced, Eralp said:

“In our city, love and justice have defeated hatred.”

Merz called the result in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern a disaster, but told reporters at a crisis meeting of CDU leadership in Berlin that he was staying on as chancellor. He said:

“What needs to be done now requires backbone, perseverance and patience. Reforms must come. I am taking on that responsibility because I want to move our country forward.”

The first to call on him to resign was an ally of his biggest political rival: Tino Chrupalla, the AfD’s federal co-leader, told the broadcaster ZDF that Merz’s remarks that day were, in his words, “more than lukewarm,” since the chancellor had announced he would carry on as before instead of finally drawing the consequences and stepping down.

The defeat in two states comes as Merz’s approval ratings have fallen to around 14 percent after just sixteen months in office, while the chancellor struggles to push through the economic and social reforms he announced with coalition partner SPD. Discontent within his own party is growing as a result. Regional elections rarely draw attention outside Germany, but the AfD’s breakthrough in Saxony-Anhalt two weeks earlier, which the party views as a first step toward the 2029 federal election, had already, in observers’ assessments, sent shockwaves across Europe.

The results in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern also come ahead of a meeting that, according to sources familiar with the preparations, AfD leadership and Kirill Dmitriev, a close economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin, plan to hold next year. The talks would center on resuming Russian gas deliveries to Germany through the Nord Stream pipeline, the very sanctions regime that Berlin, together with the rest of the European Union, imposed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. How much such an agenda will further shape the debate in German politics will be tested at the next milestone, the 2029 federal election, which the AfD now approaches from a considerably stronger position than just a month ago, after two consecutive state election wins.