The post-communists prevail in Berlin and the far right wins in a new state of Germany

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 polls that leave two clear winners: the far-right and the post-communist left. In Mecklenburg, Alternative for Germany has prevailed over the Social Democrats, who have governed this state since 2017 and with whom the far-right had been in a neck-and-neck battle in the polls. The German chancellor's party obtains its worst result in history in this state, and in Berlin it is unseated by The Left (Die Linke), which wins an election for the first time with almost one out of every four votes.

The defeat of the CDU in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is particularly serious. Friedrich Merz's party managed to enter the regional parliament by just a few tenths of a percentage point. It was left with just over 5% of the votes, 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 results were known: “We cannot gloss over 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 asserted.

However, he refused to resign and promised to work to reverse the CDU's defeat at the polls, which worsens with every electoral call. Merz's recipe to get his party afloat involves, as he has maintained in recent weeks, pushing for reforms at the 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 candidate for The Left, 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 board, have won the elections. It is also the first time that the party has surpassed the SPD, which also falls behind the Greens. Although the radical left has been part of the city-state's government in previous legislatures alongside 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 20% of the votes and, while it is left practically without options to govern, it has been able to stay almost four points ahead of the far right. 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 read as a litmus test for Friedrich Merz's government. With the CDU achieving 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 less than the AfD, which is leading the polls.

In the Christian Democrat ranks, alarm bells have been ringing for months, and the dismal results in the latest trips to the polls have meant that within the party a debate is beginning about what to do 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 opposing directions in which social democrats and conservatives move increasingly evident.