Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania before the election | Catching up in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania

Manuela Schwesig is more popular than almost any other SPD politician in the Federal Republic. Photo: dpa/Jens Büttner In the last few weeks before the state elections, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig gave her all once again. Was traveling everywhere. Chatted with families and pensioners, sang along in the shanty choir. In fact, the 52-year-old is the popular figurehead of the Northeast SPD and has amazing approval ratings despite her second term in office just coming to an end. According to recent surveys, 60 percent of citizens would vote for Schwesig if they could elect her directly.

The politician is fully committed to this card, and so the "woman against blue", as she is called on billboards in reference to the AfD's party color, also emphasized on Wednesday evening in the "TV duel" with its top candidate Leif-Erik Holm: "If you want Manuela Schwesig, you have to give both votes to the SPD." In doing so, she angered the Greens, who are offering themselves for a three-party coalition. So far there has not been enough for the red-red coalition to continue, because the Left seems to be stuck at the approval rating of nine or ten percent.

The AfD remains the strongest force in MV. But Schwesig and her SPD have recently made a remarkable comeback. While the Social Democrats were at a paltry 20 percent in the polls a year ago, the most recent surveys put them at 34 to 35 percent, i.e. only two to three points behind the AfD. However, the non-voter, the unknown creature, could still thwart the plans of the forces on this side of the extreme right party - as in Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD was able to mobilize a particularly large number of non-voters. The impact of speech battles on television therefore appears to be limited.

Nevertheless, Schwesig tried to score points with self-imposed issues such as women's rights. Right from the start, she accused the AfD of planning an attack on achievements such as free daycare. Holm rejected this as "populist propaganda" and said that they just wanted to ensure more freedom of choice for women who want to stay at home and at the same time pay more attention to how many hours of care are needed.

The topics addressed in the duel were determined by NDR through citizen surveys as the ones that most concern people between the Baltic Sea and the Lake District. Education was at the top of the list - both at the duel and at the so-called Quadrell on Tuesday evening, in which the top candidates from the Left, CDU, Greens and BSW had their say.

The trigger for this increase in importance could be the "angry speech" of a high school student who complained at the prom at her school in Hagenow in July that 30 percent of her class had failed the Abitur exam, also because of the constant cancellation of mathematics lessons. The speech went viral on Tiktok and Co.

AfD man Holm used the incident to suggest that the rate of failed final exams was so high throughout the state. Schwesig was able to refute this and sell the results of her education policy despite all the problems - just like Education Minister Simone Oldenburg did in the group of small parties.

The AfD and CDU presented many measures that the red-red coalition has already taken as plans for the next legislature, such as motivating retired teachers to continue teaching again. According to Holm, the AfD wants to immediately order 400 teachers currently employed by authorities and the Ministry of Education back into school service. Three percent of lessons are currently canceled in MV.

In addition to too much bureaucracy for trades and large companies and the situation in the health sector, the topic of migration once again played a major role in both TV rounds. It was about the dilemma that urgently needed skilled workers, especially in MV, do not feel welcome due to widespread racism and discrimination. Left-wing leading candidate Oldenburg emphasized that a third of the employees in nursing homes, hospitals and the hospitality industry are now people without a German passport.

Even the AfD admits that foreign skilled workers are needed due to the aging population.

"We want immigration into the labor market, but not into the welfare state."

The CDU even wants to set up a “welcome agency”. At the same time, their top candidate Daniel Peters emphasized: "We want immigration into the labor market, but not into the welfare state." Anyone who is "hard-working and wants to get involved" is "of course warmly welcome." Schwesig also referred primarily to successes in terms of the reduction in the number of people entering the country "irregularly" as a result of the permanent controls at the German borders. She also only wants people in the country who are useful.

Like Green Party lead candidate Claudia Müller, Simone Oldenburg emphasized that asylum applications must continue to be examined individually. Asylum seekers and other immigrants should receive “faster recognition of professional qualifications and more language courses.”

Meanwhile, Leif-Erik Holm believes that the friendliness of the people in MV towards immigrants will automatically increase if "illegals" are finally "consistently deported." There are currently only 126,000 people living in the sparsely populated MV with its 1.57 million inhabitants without a German passport. Of them, just 4,000 are required to leave the country, although most of them have a so-called tolerated status, meaning they cannot be deported for various reasons.

The AfD, on the other hand, wants to “roll out the red carpet” for companies. Schwesig explained that she was already taking action in this regard and that the state government was providing large subsidies. There is an upswing in MV, especially in the construction of ships for the military. Only BSW's top candidate, Peter Schabbel, spoke out against this "unsustainable boom". “War economy” creates “no values,” he emphasized. However, his party will oppose contracts that have already been concluded between companies and clients.

Things only became controversial in the small group when it came to possible coalitions. Simone Oldenburg said that it would be enough for red-red again and that they wanted to continue governing with the SPD. The surveys don't show this yet. The snubbed Green Party representative Müller called it “irresponsible” that Oldenburg was not thinking about a three-party coalition. CDU man Peters, in turn, confirmed that his party would neither work with the AfD nor with the Left. The latter is in favor of expropriation and “suspends the performance principle.”

BSW man Schabbel also offered to “tip the scales” for MV and announced that he would also talk to the AfD because it was a democratically elected force. He wants to promote the concept of a non-partisan government of experts. The BSW is not available for coalitions with other parties.

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