Election campaign in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: Schwesig at operating temperature

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's SPD Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig didn't take long to get up to speed. In the NDR TV duel against the AfD candidate Leif Erik Holm four days before the state elections in the northeast on Sunday, she immediately switched to attack mode.

“The AfD is anti-business and will destroy jobs,” she said on Wednesday evening, addressing her main rival. His party is running with men “who want to belittle us women and threaten us.” The extreme right is a catastrophe for social cohesion. She stands for hatred and agitation.

The AfD member of the Bundestag Holm is not officially the top candidate, but rather a “candidate for the office of Prime Minister”, a precaution to be able to stay in Berlin in the event of the missed “takeover of power” in Schwerin. Schwesig also used this to her advantage by explaining: “For me, over the years and in the future, it has always been true: I represent the interests of the people here.” Holm, on the other hand, well.

Schwesig used one word at least five times: deception. Holm is deceiving people. He kept snapping back. Something like: “This is complete nonsense that you’re saying here again.” Or to the moderators: “You can see how dishonestly Ms. Schwesig works.” Or again to Schwesig: “It upsets me that you keep lying.”

This went on for an hour. A serious Manuela Schwesig in her standard red uniform at one desk, the rather dull AfD member Leif-Erik Holm in his pale blue suit at the other desk, opposite two moderators, all without an audience. Thematically, the political vegetable patch was plowed through: education, economy, migration, health care.

Holm still had to answer additional questions about public broadcasting. Contrary to the program of his own party, the right-winger, who is seen as “bourgeois-moderate”, does not want to abolish the NDR – or only a little. Because the station is far too expensive, too rarely invites AfDlers to talk shows and spreads “disinformation”. But “of course” the evening information program “Nordmagazin” should pass it on there.

It wasn't just at this point that it was unclear what Holm was actually getting at. But overall the knowledge gained from “The Duel” was manageable. Sometimes Schwesig and Holm simply talked past each other. Schwesig was still able to get her message across: Thanks to her, things are already going well in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and thanks to her things will go even better in the future.

As in the first TV duel with Holm on the private news channel ntv exactly a week ago, the SPD politician also came up trumps on NDR with one argument in particular: According to a survey, 60 percent of those surveyed would like her to remain Prime Minister. Only 25 percent wanted Holm.

Me or the AfD, the woman against blue: It is exactly the TV format that Manuela Schwesig expressly wanted. At least that's how the political competitors portray it. As a reminder: There was some trouble in advance about the TV debates.

The NDR, but even more so the broadcasting group RTL/ntv, were accused by the CDU and the Left of having deliberately pushed their top candidates out of the “big” group – at Schwesig’s express request. Apparently the Prime Minister just wanted to compete against her AfD competitor. The SPD vehemently denied this.

But the matter was far from over, especially for the CDU. This is even less so as the long-standing ruling party continued to sink in the polls, while Schwesig's SPD took off with its extremely professional campaign after the Saxony-Anhalt election at the latest.

If you trust the polls, things are going well for the SPD, which has been steadily gaining ground for weeks. In a survey published on Wednesday, the party is now at 35 percent, only two points behind the AfD. The other parties follow at a large distance. The Left has 10 percent, the CDU only has a catastrophic 7 percent, and the Greens are stuck at 5 percent, as before.

For the CDU, the SPD is to blame for all of this, not its own poster campaign with fish sandwich motifs, which is rather ridiculed in the state. CDU general secretary Franziska Hoppermann explained that Schwesig was “putting her party political interests above the interests of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania”. It is “irresponsible” that she is trying “to keep the CDU down with a personalized election campaign.” This weakens the political center.

The SPD, for its part, did not put up with this and pushed back. It gives the “impression that the CDU is looking for reasons for its poor poll numbers everywhere but within itself,” explained Julian Barlen, SPD parliamentary group leader in the state parliament and Schwesig’s close confidante. “You can’t win elections with fish sandwiches and Friedrich Merz.”

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania's CDU no longer has any hope of being able to do anything by Sunday. Unlike all other parties, the party even forgoes the traditional end of the election campaign with great fanfare. "Why should we do that? It would only be for the media," said the CDU when asked by taz.