Goodbye in the coastal area

Election victory with one woman show: Manuela Schwesig on September 26th

When Friedrich Merz (CDU) appeared before the press on Monday afternoon after his party's two state election defeats, a loser was missing from his side. Only Berlin's top candidate Stefan Evers came to the Konrad Adenauer House. Daniel Peters, the CDU state chairman of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, on the other hand, had saved himself the trip from Schwerin to Berlin. Merz was probably fine with it. It was already difficult for him to find words for the “dramatic, unique result” and the “deep turning point”: with 4.9 percent of the vote in the northeastern federal state, the CDU was thrown out of a state parliament for the first time in its history.

“We will have to talk about the consequences for a long time,” said the CDU Federal Chairman and Chancellor, visibly struggling to keep his composure. He no longer needs to talk to Peters: he resigned on Monday evening. Now Philipp Amthor is temporarily leading Angela Merkel's former home state association into the extra-parliamentary opposition.

Schwesig successfully portrayed herself as an omnipresent country mother who, in the interests of her country and its residents, is not afraid to take on the bigheads in faraway Berlin.

The failure of the CDU in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, an expression of the party's deep nationwide crisis, has overshadowed another sensation of election evening: the resurrection of the SPD in the coastal state. After its 39.6 percent in the 2021 state election, the party had fallen to as low as 19 percent in the state polls. In the 2025 federal election, only 12.4 percent in the country voted for the SPD - a decrease of 16.7 percentage points compared to the previous federal election. This placed it in third place behind the AfD (35 percent) and even the CDU (17.8), and just ahead of the Left Party (twelve). From this low level, the SPD started an impressive race to catch up with the AfD. She relied exclusively on the charisma of Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig, the “woman for MV”.

Schwesig successfully portrayed herself as an omnipresent country mother who, in the interests of her country and its residents, is not afraid to take on the bigheads in faraway Berlin. The 52-year-old, who has been the first woman to rule in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for nine years, denounced the anti-social reform projects of the black-red federal government violently and without regard for her own comrades in the federal government. She sharply criticized the planned end to the pension without deductions after 45 years of contributions because it would particularly affect people in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

After the election in Saxony-Anhalt, the “woman for MV” became “the woman against blue”. In fact, she managed to get closer to the AfD, percentage point by percentage point. While Schwesig had announced at the beginning of her election campaign that it wasn't all that important who ended up in first place, she now stated the goal of making the SPD the strongest force in the country again.

This included paying no attention to the Left Party, the CDU and the Greens during the election campaign. On the contrary: to the horror of the Greens, Schwesig even warned against voting for them in the final stretch of the election campaign because the votes could be wasted.

This was a high-risk strategy. With a comparable campaign, her party colleague Dietmar Woidke had already won the state elections in Brandenburg in 2024, just ahead of the AfD - at the expense of the Greens and the Left Party, which were thrown out of parliament, and the CDU, which emerged from the election greatly weakened. The result was that Woidke then had to rely on the BSW in order to remain Prime Minister. However, since the BSW now considers his entry into the state governments of Brandenburg and Thuringia to be a major mistake that should not be repeated, Schwesig would not have been given this questionable option. Rather, it only narrowly missed the situation in Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD and the BSW together not only have a majority in parliament, but are also conducting intensive discussions about cooperation.

If the BSW (4.8 percent) had overcome the five percent hurdle instead of the Greens (5.7 percent), Manuela Schwesig (SPD) would now only be opposition leader.

Ultimately, the SPD in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania did not manage to overtake the AfD. She only came in second with 35.5 percent. Given the poor starting position, this is still a remarkable success, but it comes at a price. Luckily for Schwesig, only the CDU missed out on returning to the state parliament. So she can now at least cobble together a red-red-green coalition. The Left Party and the Greens made it into parliament with 6.5 and 5.7 percent, while the BSW narrowly failed with 4.8 percent. If the BSW had overcome the five percent hurdle instead of the Greens, Schwesig would now only be the opposition leader.

There had been an “intense escalation” between the SPD and AfD, with the CDU being “crushed,” complained Merz. The polarized election campaign "went in the wrong direction," said the Left Party's top candidate, Simone Oldenburg, angrily after the election. It was “carried out on the backs of the democratic parties” and “only benefited the AfD”.

What is striking about the election results in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is that the SPD's success did not come at the expense of the AfD. At 38.2 percent, the far-right party was able to increase its vote by around three percentage points compared to its federal election result. As in Saxony-Anhalt, it benefited primarily from the influx of former BSW voters, whose share of the vote was more than halved compared to the federal election. As in Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD is now the strongest party in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Gloomy prospects.

After the BSW failed to enter parliament in Berlin, there is at least much to suggest that Sahra Wagenknecht's party will only remain a transitional phenomenon, comparable to the long-forgotten Pirate Party.