German Chancellor Friedrich Merz was clinging to power on Monday (September 21, 2026) after his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered its worst regional election defeat in post-War Germany, and members of his coalition clashed over his unpopular reform agenda.
Merz’s party also lost votes in a second election, in the state of Berlin, where the far-left Die Linke party, whose roots lie in the Communist party that once ran East Germany, could take power in a coalition after winning the most seats. Mr. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came first. it was the second time within a month that the party had topped a state election, which it sees as building momentum towards national power While it fell well short of a majority. Mr. But members of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), his coalition partner, pushed back. They include Manuela Schwesig, the incumbent Premier of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, who has sharply criticised the federal government’s pension reforms.
Merz himself described the loss on Sunday (September 20, 2026) in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as a “disaster”, as his party missed the 5% threshold for entering a state parliament for the first time.
Its hardline stance on immigration has left some people of migrant background in Germany questioning their future. In Berlin, Die Linke topped a state election for the first time, on a campaign to nationalise housing from corporate landlords and put a cap on rents, echoing the rise of New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The AfD leads national opinion polls but has been kept from power by the refusal of the other main parties to work with it, in a policy known as the “firewall” that has come under increasing scrutiny as the party gained strength. Yasmin Goudarzi, an educational scientist who attended an election event hosted by a migrant organisation in Schwerin, the capital of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, said: “The fact that the AfD is in the lead is quite a bitter pill to swallow.
