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The latest round of German state election results are in, with great gains for the left-wing parties and the AfD, and a crisis of confidence for the center-right CDU, which had its worst election results in modern German history.
After the AfD’s historic win in Saxony-Anhalt two weeks ago, all eyes turned to the state elections in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin, which were held yesterday. In Berlin, the CDU dropped from the largest to second-largest party, which will push it out of government. This result was not unexpected: the Left, Greens, and SPD had won enough seats to form a left-wing coalition government in the 2021 Berlin election, and the CDU only snuck into power after those results were overturned due to election irregularities. The Left, led by Turkish dual-citizen Elif Eralp, saw the greatest gains, at 26% of the vote, while the AfD also did quite respectably, at 16%. The CDU, Greens, and SPD all lost seats, but the Left, Greens, and SPD will be able to easily form a coalition government.
(Incidentally, for anyone who was hoping that the AfD would do better in Berlin, the city’s demographics makes that almost impossible. “As of December 2025, about 42.3% registered residents of Berlin had a migration background, compared with 29.9% in 2015. Out of that, 976,419 residents (24.9%) were foreign nationals and 678,774 (17.3%) were German citizens with a migration background.” (Wikipedia) Even if the AfD were to somehow convince every single ethnic German in the city to oust the Ausländer, ethnic Germans will soon be a minority in their own capital city.)
Yesterday’s real electoral drama wasn’t in Berlin, however, but in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the CDU failed to overcome the five percent hurdle and so won zero seats in parliament. This is the first time that the CDU/CSU has failed to receive any seats in a state or federal election. The AfD, on the other hand, surpassed all recent polls, gaining 38% of the vote and 32/71 seats. Of course, this will still result in a left-wing government, as all of the remaining seats were won by the Left, Greens, and SPD.
One thing I can’t quite understand is where all of the CDU voters went. Looking at opinion polls in the run-up to the election, the AfD was at a stable ~35% of the vote for the past year, while the CDU dropped from 13% to ultimately less than 5%. Did the center-right CDU voters mostly switch to the center-left SPD? This is what seems to have happened, but I have no real insight as to why, except that no one seems to like the CDU these days. If any of our resident Germans can chime in, I’d appreciate hearing your thoughts.
Foreign Nationals are allowed to vote? Something feels quite wrong to lose the ability to control the destiny of your people in such a short time period.
It’s amazing how far many of us have gone since only 20 years ago and believing we could Democratize the world to now I would not consider myself a believer of Democracy in Germany because of the simply fact that ethnic Germans in half a generation lost the ability to control their own politics.
My thoughts as well. Sweden is also in this situation and several others are rushing headlong into it.
I've been trying for a while to think of any mistakes nations have made of the same magnitude, throughout history. Vortigern hiring the Saxons might be an instructive one.
It's so weird to me, though fitting in retrospect, that sanctimonious grundyism is what's finally killing Europe. Old ladies tutting reproachfully at anyone who makes non-socially-approved arguments turns out to be an existential threat. Or perhaps it's just that the men have forgotten God and their own right place in the world.
I can think of a couple from Germany.
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I am also often stunned by the power of consensus in a variety of fields but don't they also just arrest you for wrongspeech over there? It's not like it's a fair playing field.
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The Soviets walking out of the UN and this allowing the West to fight the Korean War.
All time great.
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