Germany's Far-Right AfD Shuts Out Merz's Party Entirely in Historic State Election Rout
Chancellor Friedrich Merz calls the results a "disaster" after his Christian Democrats collapsed to under 5% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania — the party's worst state result since World War II.
Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party won the most votes in a state election over the weekend, while Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democrats suffered the worst result in the party's postwar history — a defeat so severe it shut the CDU out of the state parliament entirely.
The AfD won roughly 38% of the vote in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a northeastern state, while exit polls showed Merz's CDU collapsing from 13% to just 4.9% — below the 5% threshold needed to hold any seats at all. It is, according to Axios, the lowest result the party has posted in any German state election since the end of World War II.
Merz calls it a "disaster"
Merz did not sugarcoat the outcome, publicly describing the results as a "disaster" for his party. He said he intends to remain in office and press ahead with his reform agenda despite the setback, which comes just two weeks after the AfD delivered the CDU a separate defeat in the state of Saxony-Anhalt.
A "DISASTER" — MERZ ON HIS OWN PARTY'S COLLAPSE
The results cap a brutal stretch for Merz, whose approval ratings have fallen to roughly 14% just 16 months into his chancellorship. The same election weekend saw Germany's far-left party win the separate Berlin state election, underscoring a broader flight of voters away from the political center on both flanks.
Why it matters beyond Germany
The AfD's rise has alarmed European allies who see Germany, the EU's largest economy and a NATO anchor, as a bellwether for the far right's growing appeal across the continent. The party has built support on anti-immigration policies and euroskeptic messaging, and Sunday's results mark its strongest state-level showing yet in what has traditionally been considered CDU-friendly territory.
Party leaders across Germany's political spectrum have so far ruled out forming any coalition with the AfD at the state or federal level, meaning Sunday's result is likely to produce a fragile, negotiated governing coalition among the remaining parties in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania rather than handing the AfD control outright. Still, the scale of the CDU's collapse is expected to intensify pressure on Merz's leadership heading into the next round of state votes.