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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.
That’s nice, but they didn’t lose that ability.
Ethnic Germans still have majorities (almost?) everywhere. They are choosing not to vote as a bloc. I think this is a good thing; coalition governments are more accountable than one-party states. Note that naturalized citizens apparently aren’t voting as a bloc either. They’re just much less likely to go AfD.
We will disagree on it being “a good thing”. But what is significant is it’s not a mean reverting situation with this level of migration. Ethnic German vote share could surge to 80% AFD in a decade or two but the non-German population would vote anything but AFD and block any reform. As the share of ethnic German vote shares shrinks it becomes harder to correct policy. There is not corrective measure outside of basically a military dictatorship.
Sir, the goalposts are back there.
They have not lost it. They are choosing—of their own free will!—policies which might give it up. Why do you think that is?
More importantly, why do you think they need to “correct” it? If you’re trying to give them “control of their destiny,” maybe a military dictatorship is a complete nonstarter.
Civilizational guilt, mostly.
And the strange, grossly arrogant way Western "liberals" think that their culture is water and they no longer need to defend anything they care about.
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I’m lost to your point.
Obviously it is harder to have anti-immigration policies in a Democracy when you have a large foreign ethnic block. They will vote against you.
I do agree it’s largely an own goal at this point. But policy errors do happen and my point is when you change who votes it now becomes harder to correct a policy mistake.
Many Germans are happy to vote for replacement.
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