Germany’s regional elections have dealt a major setback to Chancellor Friedrich Merz, with preliminary official results showing a crushing defeat for his Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where the party failed to clear the five-percent hurdle, and a weak showing in Berlin.
The CDU/CSU was languishing at just 20% nationwide as of last weekend, according to an INSA ‘Sunday Trend’ poll. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) remained the country’s most popular party, with 29% support. This comes despite pressure on the AfD from Germany’s domestic security agency over its alleged ‘extremist’ tendencies and efforts by mainstream parties to keep it out of government.
Merz himself has also faced widespread dissatisfaction, with 78% of respondents surveyed by INSA reportedly unhappy with his performance as chancellor.
The CDU therefore entered Sunday’s vote under considerable pressure, compounded by its electoral drubbing in Saxony-Anhalt earlier this month.
Preliminary results
The Left Party (Die Linke) came first in Berlin with 25.7% of the vote – up from the 12.2% it garnered in the previous election in 2023, according to preliminary official results. The party’s lead candidate, Elif Eralp, a first-generation German with Turkish-born parents, told cheering supporters on Sunday evening that “from today on, we will change Berlin together.”
Merz’s CDU took 18.8%, representing a considerable decline compared to its performance in 2023, when the Christian Democrats won 28.2% of the vote.
The AfD, by contrast, nearly doubled its support compared with 2023, coming in third with 16.3%.
The result puts the Left Party in pole position to lead Berlin’s next government, potentially for the first time since German reunification in 1990.
In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the AfD finished first with 38.2% of the vote in a dramatic turnaround – an improvement of 21.5 percentage points compared with the party’s result in the 2021 election. Party co-leader Tino Chrupalla said the result showed that the AfD “clearly have the mandate to govern here.”
Merz’s CDU, meanwhile, suffered a historic setback, securing just 4.9% of the vote and failing to clear the threshold for entering the state parliament – the first time the CDU has failed to clear the five-percent hurdle in a German state election.
Even before it became clear that the CDU would fall short of the minimum, Merz described his party’s showing as a “disaster.” However, he refused to change course or step down in the face of yet another electoral defeat.
Who is voting for what?
In Berlin, which is both a city and one of Germany’s 16 federal states, approximately 2.5 million people are eligible to elect the House of Representatives, the local legislature.
Voters have cast two votes: one for a direct candidate in one of 78 constituencies and the other for a party’s state or district list. The second determines the overall distribution of seats. The legislature normally has 130 lawmakers, although its size can increase through so-called ‘balancing’ seats.
Preliminary data suggest turnout in Berlin has surpassed that recorded in the previous regional election in February 2023.
In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, around 1.3 million people are eligible to elect the state parliament. They similarly voted for both a constituency candidate and a party list.
Sunday’s elections also marked the first time 16- and 17-year-olds had been allowed to vote in either contest.
The rising cost of living has been among voters’ biggest concerns. Some 67% of respondents in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and 56% in Berlin named it as their primary preoccupation in an Infratest Dimap poll conducted earlier this week. In Berlin, unaffordable housing also emerged as a major campaign issue.
Why do the elections matter nationally?
Sunday’s votes came just two weeks after the AfD won another eastern state, Saxony-Anhalt, with 43.8%, while the CDU finished a distant second with 17.2%.
That result intensified scrutiny of Merz’s future as leader of the party.
Table.Briefings reported earlier this week that he planned to convene the CDU executive committee on Sunday and put the question of confidence to a test. ZDF has also reported that talk of replacing Merz has circulated within the party for months, although no clear successor has emerged.
Reuters reported earlier this week, citing an anonymous government source, that the chancellor had canceled a planned trip to the UN General Assembly in New York to attend a special meeting in Berlin on Sunday.
A YouGov poll published on Thursday found that 48% of respondents expect Merz to be out of office by the end of the year.
Merz under pressure
Merz took over in May 2025 promising sweeping economic reforms and a stronger German leadership role in Europe. His coalition government, which also includes the Social Democrats (SPD), has struggled to revitalize the country’s economy.
Germany endured three consecutive years of economic stagnation and recession before GDP grew 0.3% in the second quarter of 2026. German industry has faced mounting pressure from high energy costs following Berlin’s move away from Russian oil and gas.
At the same time, Merz has committed billions of euros to an ambitious rearmament program and continued military aid to Ukraine, while calling on Germans to work more.
The regional results do not directly determine the composition of the federal government, but the CDU’s projected showing – particularly its 5% result in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania – could intensify debate within the party over Merz’s leadership and political strategy.