Please follow us on Truth Social, X, YouTube, Minds, Telegram, Rumble, GETTR, Gab, Instagram
An unexpected map Germany woke up to this morning. In state elections held yesterday, September 20, 2026, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) polled an unprecedented 37.1% – more than double the 16.7% the right-wing party received in elections held in this eastern German state five years ago. While the chancellor Friedrich Merz and his Christian Democrats (CDU) were plummeting to a catastrophic low of 5.4% (only just above the 5% threshold required for entering the state legislature), the Social Democrats (SPD) scored 35.6% – enough to form a government, but with the involved arithmetic of a coalition with the Left Party.
In second place of the elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania were the Social Democrats (SPD). With 35.6 percent of the votes they would form a coalition with the Alternative for Germany, which would be arithmetically complicated for the SPD. For the CDU however the results of the elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are catastrophic. In the state that borders Poland and the Baltic Sea the party nearly ceased to exist.
The same evening Chancellor Merz also appeared on television, claiming that he wanted to press ahead with his reforms even more strongly than before. Ines Schwerdtner of the Left Party commented that everybody had expected Merz to resign as chancellor of Germany on the evening of the Mecklenburg state elections. In fact his decision to press on was a major political blunder according to many commentators.
Separately, state elections in Berlin also were held on Sunday. The German left, in the form of the newly renamed old East German communists, the Left Party, won the greatest number of votes in Berlin with 26%. Behind them followed the CDU (19%), the new rightwing radicals, the AfD (16%), the Greens (14%) and the SPD (12%). With 26 percent of the vote in Berlin, the Left Party candidate for the capital, Elif Eralp, is to become the first left-wing mayor of all time, and the first female mayor for the post-reunification era in Berlin.
Alice Weidel of the AfD campaign team called the results of the elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern a clear message to the government. "The message is clear: people want change, they want something different than what this government is offering," she told DW on Sunday. When asked whether she would meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin if she became Chancellor, Weidel replied that she would meet with "Trump, Putin and the President of Ukraine all at once" and that she wanted "new elections in Ukraine".
The AfD successfully built a voter base by portraying Germany's weapons exports to Ukraine negatively, campaigning for a resumption of natural gas imports from Russia and last but not least launching a repulsive campaign against immigrants and foreigners. The voter base that the right wing extremist party manages to mobilize in the barely populated and economically underdeveloped state of Mecklenburg is for a large part composed of recent East Germans who have switched to the AfD within a very short period of time.
The federal government and the federal elections are a completely different story. Merz will have to deal with the results of the Mecklenburg state election for the time being. And here the arithmetic is not very rosy for him. For the time being, he is governing in a coalition with the Social Democrats. The federal elections were held on February 24, 2026. An early end to the SPD/CDU government could already happen in 2027.
The main parties in Germany are refusing to govern with the help of the AfD at local or federal level. The cost of this policy to them could soon be too high to bear.
