CDU defeat: it loses Berlin and could be left out of the parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania
The post-communists prevail in the German capital and the extreme right wins in a new eastern state
BarcelonaGermany's grand coalition is left shaken after this weekend's elections in the states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Berlin. Both the CDU and the SPD have suffered significant electoral setbacks in elections that leave two clear winners: the far-right and the post-communist left. In Mecklenburg, Alternative for Germany has surpassed the Social Democrats, who have been governing since 2017 and with whom the far-right was neck-and-neck in the polls. Nevertheless, the Social Democratic candidate Manuela Schwesig will be able to continue governing as the far-right has no way of obtaining a majority. The German chancellor's party, on the other hand, obtains its worst result in history in this state and, as of now, would be left out of the regional parliament, aggravating the internal crisis. In Berlin, the CDU has been unseated by The Left (Die Linke), which wins an election for the first time with one out of every four votes.
The defeat of the CDU in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is especially serious. Friedrich Merz's party is struggling during the count to manage to keep deputies in the regional Parliament. With the scrutiny quite advanced, it is left out of the chamber by obtaining 4.9% of the votes, below the 5%, the minimum threshold established by law to obtain representation. Proof of the gravity of the result for the CDU is that Merz himself reacted quickly when the poll was known: “We cannot sugarcoat the result in Mecklenburg. It is a disaster –he declared from the party's headquarters in Berlin–. The CDU fought, but was crushed in the confrontation between the SPD and the AfD," he assured.
However, he has refused to resign and has promised to work to reverse the CDU's defeat at the polls, which worsens with every electoral call. Merz's recipe to refloat his party consists, just as he has maintained in recent weeks, in promoting reforms at a federal level. "I assume this responsibility, because I want to move our country forward –he remarked this Sunday–. What needs to be done now requires firmness and patience. I will provide it as president of the party and, above all, as chancellor," he added.
Be that as it may, the setback for the CDU is twofold. In Berlin, where until now it governed hand in hand with the SPD, the Left's candidate, Elif Eralp, has prevailed over both the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats. It is the first time that the post-communists, the party furthest to the left on the German institutional political spectrum, have won the elections. It is also the first time that the party has surpassed the SPD, which also remains behind the Greens. Although the radical left has been part of the city-state's government in previous legislatures, hand in hand with the Social Democrats and the Greens, the mayorship has always fallen to the CDU or the SPD.
Merz considers the result in Berlin to be "decent," since the CDU has gathered just under 20% of the votes and, although it is left with practically no options to govern, it has been able to stay almost four points ahead of the far-right, while losing almost 10 percentage points of support. Even so, the ultras also improve their results considerably, going from achieving 9% of the votes to obtaining 16%.
The AfD pressures the CDU
After the overwhelming victory, at the beginning of September, of the far-right in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD fell three seats short of an absolute majority, this Sunday's elections were seen as a litmus test for Friedrich Merz's government. With the CDU recording its worst result in history in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the outlook does not improve for the general elections, which are scheduled for 2029. The latest polls point to a decline for the conservatives to 20% of the vote, seven points behind the AfD, which leads the polls.
In the Christian Democratic ranks, alarm bells have been ringing for months, and the dismal results in the last trips to the polls have caused debate to begin within the party about what needs to be done for the future. Among the conservatives, voices have emerged that are beginning to see the strategy of the cordon sanitaire against the far-right as exhausted, a particularly sensitive issue in the country due to its Nazi past.
In this sense, the leader of the AfD, Alice Weidel, has again pressured the CDU to agree to reach a pact with her party. Weidel has directly linked the CDU's latest electoral setbacks to the cordon sanitaire it maintains with the far-right party, and has demanded that Merz's party agree to negotiate "as soon as possible."
The results and the polarization of the German political spectrum also put the Grand Coalition led by Merz against the ropes. The two partners, the CDU and the SPD, often clash when proposing economic or social measures, and the shift of the electorate towards the far-right and the radical left makes the sometimes opposite directions in which social democrats and conservatives move increasingly evident.