Headline Roundup • September 21st, 2026
'Far-Left' and 'Far-Right' Win German State Elections, Merz's CDU Suffers Historic Defeat
Summary from the AllSides News Team
Germans in Berlin and Mecklenburg-West Pomerania voted in state elections on Sunday, giving democratic socialist The Left (DL) a win in Berlin and the populist right Alternative for Germany (AfD) a victory in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.
CDU Losses: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered significant losses in both provinces. In Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, the CDU failed to reach the 5% vote required to remain in parliament, marking the first time since the party formed in 1945 that it will be absent from a state's parliament.
Berlin: Turnout was high at 74.2%. DL won 24.5% of the vote and gained 25 seats, bringing its total to 47. CDU finished second with 20% and lost 18 seats. AfD finished third with 16% and gained 12. The Greens won 15% and lost 8 seats, followed by the center-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which received 12% and lost 12 seats. The populist left Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) won 5%, allowing it to enter parliament.
Mecklenburg-West Pomerania: Turnout was also high in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania at 78.1%. AfD won 38.2% of the vote and more than doubled its seat total from 14 to 32. The SPD finished second with 35.5% and lost 5 seats. DL received 6.5% and lost 4 seats, followed by the Greens, which won 5.7% and retained all 5 of its seats. The CDU only received 4.9% of the vote, meaning it will exit the state's parliament. BSW just missed the threshold to enter with 4.8% of the vote.
Political Context: Several parties in Germany have vowed to form a "firewall" against AfD and never form a coalition with it, meaning its only path to power would be through a majority. Earlier this month, however, when AfD dominated elections in Saxony-Anhalt, BSW said that while it would not form a coalition with AfD, it was open to dialogue. A hardline stance on migration is central to both AfD and BSW's platforms. In May 2025, Germany's domestic intelligence agency, the BfV, designated AfD as a right-wing extremist organization.
Key Quotes: Merz called the Mecklenburg-West Pomerania results a "disaster" and said, "What needs to be done now requires backbone, steadfastness, and patience. The reforms have to come. I am taking on this responsibility because I want to move our country forward." AfD leader Alice Weidel said the CDU will "have to think very carefully about whether it can continue with this firewall." Elif Eralp, Die Linke's leader in Berlin and the daughter of Turkish immigrants, said, "In our city, love and justice have triumphed over hatred."
Previous Elections: In Germany's most recent national elections in February 2025, AfD surged to finish second to the CDU with 21% of the vote, dominating in Germany's eastern states. Previously, in September 2024, AfD delivered a historic result in the east German state of Thuringia.
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How The Media Covered It: German government-funded Deutsche Welle (Center) published several pieces of coverage and generally offered framing that was critical of AfD. In one piece, it noted in its headline that AfD "has no government option" and wrote that since the party's massive win a few weeks ago, "it has been unclear exactly what the AfD is aiming for." The report also said AfD "made several negative headlines" leading up to Sunday's votes. In another report, DW described AfD and DL as "on the political fringes" and "stronger than the CDU and SPD." Similarly, Hungarian Conservative (Lean Right) described the CDU as currently "squeezed from both directions."
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Germany's far-left party Die Linke (the Left) has taken first place in a state election in Berlin, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won the most votes in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Die Linke took 25.7 percent of the vote in Berlin, the state election authority said early on Monday, comfortably ahead of Chancellor Friedrich Merz's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), which finished with just 18.8 percent of the vote.
Two of Germany's 16 federal states, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, have just elected new state legislatures. The results for Chancellor Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) represent yet another major blow in turbulent times both nationally and internationally.
In northeastern Germany, projections suggest that the CDU narrowly failed to clear the 5% threshold for representation in parliament, a historic first in the party's history.
In the German capital, the party that led the state government, lost nearly a third of its support, dropping to around 20%.
Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is on course to win another key state election in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where it leads the Social Democrats (SPD)—who have governed the state continuously since 1998—by 38.4 per cent to 35.4 per cent, with 1,959 of 1,974 electoral districts reporting, according to the 10:30pm update of the official state data.
