AfD balloons fill Berlin venue as party celebrates election gainsAfD Wins Again as CDU Wiped Out, Far-Left Tops Berlin
Left says
- •The CDU's historic collapse in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania shows that Merz's strategy of chasing right-wing voters by hardening rhetoric on migration has backfired, driving voters further right rather than reclaiming them.
- •Die Linke's first-place finish in Berlin, more than doubling its vote share, reflects deep public frustration with housing costs, inequality, and stagnant wages that mainstream parties have failed to address.
- •AfD's continued rise despite domestic intelligence monitoring it as a suspected extremist organization underscores the urgency of maintaining the political 'firewall' rather than normalizing cooperation with the party.
- •Weidel's calls for the CDU to abandon the firewall and her claim to have replaced it as Germany's mainstream party should be seen as a dangerous bid to mainstream extremism, not a legitimate governing partnership.
Right says
- •AfD's steady growth across multiple state elections, including nearly 44% in Saxony-Anhalt and 38% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, shows a genuine and growing electoral mandate that establishment parties can no longer dismiss as fringe.
- •The CDU's total wipeout in a state parliament for the first time in its history reflects a broader rejection of Merz's leadership and his failure to deliver on promises to cut AfD support in half.
- •Voters are expressing frustration with mass migration, economic stagnation, and a political establishment seen as out of touch, and the AfD is capitalizing on issues the CDU has failed to seriously confront.
- •Weidel's call for CDU-AfD dialogue, especially in eastern Germany, reflects a legitimate argument that excluding the leading vote-getter from governance undermines democratic representation.
Common Take
High Consensus- AfD won the most votes in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with about 38% support, and the CDU fell below the 5% threshold and lost all parliamentary representation there.
- Die Linke finished first in Berlin with 25.7% of the vote, more than doubling its previous result and beating the CDU by about seven points.
- Chancellor Merz publicly called the results a 'disaster' for his party while vowing to remain in office and push forward with his reform agenda.
- The results mark a significant shift in Germany's political landscape and increase pressure on the CDU's long-standing policy of refusing to govern with the AfD.
The Arguments
Right argues
AfD's consistent, growing electoral performance across multiple state elections—44% in Saxony-Anhalt, 38% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania—demonstrates a durable and expanding mandate that can no longer be dismissed as a fringe protest phenomenon.
Left counters
Vote share alone doesn't confer legitimacy when the party is under active domestic intelligence monitoring as a suspected extremist organization; electoral success and constitutional fitness to govern are separate questions.
Left argues
Merz's strategy of hardening rhetoric on migration to win back right-leaning voters has demonstrably failed and instead normalized AfD's framing, pushing voters further right rather than reclaiming them for the center.
Right counters
The CDU's collapse shows the opposite problem: Merz talked tough but delivered no substantive policy change, leaving voters who wanted real action on migration and the economy with no reason to trust his promises.
Left argues
Die Linke's surge to first place in Berlin, more than doubling its vote share, reflects genuine public anger over housing costs, inequality, and stagnant wages—issues mainstream parties have neglected, not merely a far-right backlash story.
Right counters
A single strong showing in Berlin, a left-leaning capital with unique demographics, doesn't offset the far bigger national trend of AfD's rise across multiple states, which is the more consequential structural shift.
Right argues
Weidel's call for CDU-AfD dialogue, especially in eastern Germany where AfD often wins pluralities, raises a legitimate democratic question: excluding the leading vote-getter from governance indefinitely risks delegitimizing the political process in voters' eyes.
Left counters
Democratic legitimacy isn't just about vote totals; parties whose platforms include mass deportation and are flagged for extremism forfeit the presumption that their political inclusion is a neutral democratic norm rather than a threat to democracy itself.
Left argues
Maintaining the political 'firewall' against AfD is essential given ongoing intelligence concerns about extremism within the party, and abandoning it would mainstream a movement that seeks to fundamentally alter Germany's democratic and international commitments.
Right counters
A firewall that has now failed to prevent AfD from becoming the largest party in multiple states arguably entrenches grievance politics and marginalizes millions of voters, making the firewall counterproductive rather than protective.
Challenge Questions
These questions target genuine internal contradictions — meant to provoke honest reflection.
Right asks Left
“If the firewall strategy has coincided with AfD's support roughly doubling since Merz took office, at what point does the left acknowledge that exclusion itself may be fueling the very growth it's meant to contain?”
Left asks Right
“If Merz's tougher rhetoric on migration was meant to reclaim AfD voters but instead the CDU was wiped out entirely, how does the right square its claim that voters are rewarding hardline positions with the CDU's total collapse after adopting exactly that approach?”
Outlier Report
Left Fringe
Commentators like those at Jacobin explicitly defend Die Linke against antisemitism concerns and frame AfD's rise purely as a failure of neoliberal economics; this represents roughly 10-15% of the left, more radical than mainstream Democratic-aligned views which are more centrist on European politics.
Right Fringe
Figures like Geert Wilders publicly cheering AfD's win ('Bye bye Merz') and some Breitbart-aligned commentators framing Die Linke's win as evidence of dangerous cultural leftism represent a more enthusiastic pro-AfD fringe, roughly 15-20% of the right, whereas most American conservatives are more cautious about fully endorsing a party with neo-Nazi-adjacent factions.
Noise Assessment
High noise ratio: most American public attention to German state elections is minimal and filtered through partisan framing from pundits and think tanks rather than direct public engagement, so social media reactions are dominated by politically engaged elites rather than reflecting broad public sentiment.
Sources (11)
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.
<p>Germany's ruling center-right party, Chancellor <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/02/24/germany-election-conservatives-merz-afd" target="_blank">Friedrich Merz's</a> Christian Democratic Union, was shut out of a state parliament for the first time Sunday as the far-right <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/09/09/trump-germany-afd-antisemitism" target="_blank">Alternative for Germany</a> scored its second victory this month.</p><p><strong>Why it matters:</strong> The result marks the third state election AfD has won — and its <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/09/06/afd-saxony-anhalt-germany-far-right-firewall" target="_blank">second this month</a> — underscoring its growing strength even as Germany's other major parties refuse to govern with it.</p><hr /><p><strong>Driving the news: </strong>Merz, who has <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/merzs-fate-balance-second-eastern-german-state-goes-polls-2026-09-16/" target="_blank">low</a> approval ratings, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/german-chancellor-merz-vows-to-stay-in-office-and-push-ahead-with-reforms/video-79347569" target="_blank">told</a> reporters that "reforms have to come."</p><ul><li>AfD won about 38% of the vote in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, while the CDU recorded its <a href="https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2026/09/20/german-exit-polls-show-merzs-party-suffering-heavy-losses-in-2-german-state-elections" target="_blank">worst</a> result in any German state election since World War II. The CDU fell from 13% to 4.9% and lost all representation.</li><li>In Berlin's state election, the Left more than doubled its vote share to 25.7% and finished first for the first time.</li></ul><p><strong>Flashback: </strong>AfD <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/09/02/german-far-right-state-elections-eastern-region" target="_blank">won its first</a> state election in Thuringia in 2024, though other parties kept it out of government because they refused to enter into a coalition.</p><ul><li>Earlier this month, it won 43.8% in Saxony-Anhalt, but fell just three seats short of a majority. It is now seeking enough outside support to form Germany's first far-right state government since World War II.</li><li>Vice President <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/02/14/vance-munich-speech-free-speech-afd" target="_self">JD Vance</a> met with AfD's co-leader days before last year's federal election and told the Munich Security Conference there was "no room for firewalls," referring to mainstream parties' refusal to govern with the AfD.</li></ul><p><strong>The big picture: </strong>Germany's political firewall against AfD is rooted partly in the country's post-World War II consensus against returning the far-right to government and has been reinforced by intelligence concerns about extremism within the party.</p><ul><li>Germany's domestic intelligence service continues to monitor AfD nationally as a suspected extremist organization. <a href="https://www.cfr.org/articles/far-right-afd-and-russian-hybrid-campaign-pose-twin-threat-to-germanys-merz" target="_blank">A court</a> in February blocked the agency from classifying the entire party as a confirmed right-wing extremist organization while a broader case proceeds.</li><li>The anti-migration party calls for "<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/german-remigration-debate-fuels-push-to-ban-far-right-afd/a-67965896" target="_blank">remigration</a>" — large-scale deportations and encouraging immigrants to leave. It also wants to abandon the euro, lift Russian sanctions and end weapons deliveries to Ukraine.</li></ul><p><strong>What they're saying: </strong>AfD leader Alice Weidel <a href="https://www.t-online.de/nachrichten/deutschland/innenpolitik/id_101444186/afd-chefin-alice-weidel-fordert-kanzler-merz-muss-konsequenzen-ziehen.html" target="_blank">called</a> on Merz to "face the consequences" of the CDU's losses and said her party had displaced the CDU as Germany's "people's party."</p><ul><li>She <a href="https://x.com/Alice_Weidel/status/2101721237940564183" target="_blank">wrote</a> on X the CDU "will have to think very carefully about whether it can continue with this firewall policy, especially in eastern Germany" and called for the parties to sit down for talks.</li></ul><p><strong>The bottom line: </strong>AfD's rise is reshaping politics in Europe's largest economy, putting growing pressure on Germany's governing center and the firewall that has kept the party out of power.</p>
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%.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called the results a “disaster” for his center-right party.
<p>"We can't sugarcoat the results ... it was a disaster."</p> The post <a href="https://legalinsurrection.com/2026/09/germanys-afd-scores-another-state-victory-chancellor-merz-calls-outcome-a-disaster/">Germany’s AfD Scores Another State Victory, Chancellor Merz Calls Outcome a ‘Disaster’</a> first appeared on <a href="https://legalinsurrection.com">Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion</a>.
German Chancellor Freidrich Merz conceded that the night spells "disaster" for the political center, but assured the public he'd push ahead with his federal agenda of tax and welfare reforms.
Chancellor acknowledges disastrous state election results but vow to push on is likely to further alienate voters, and his own party
<p>Young women voters were a driving force behind the victory in Berlin on Sunday for the far-left Die Linke party, the descendant of East Germany's former communist ruling party.</p> <p>The post <a href="https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2026/09/21/one-in-two-young-female-voters-backed-radical-socialist-die-linke-party-in-berlin-elections/" rel="nofollow">One in Two Young Female Voters Backed Radical Socialist Die Linke Party in Berlin Elections</a> appeared first on <a href="https://www.breitbart.com" rel="nofollow">Breitbart</a>.</p>
Claims that socialist party Die Linke threatens Jewish life in Berlin are shameful lies. Sadly, many desperate German politicians would rather make cheap antisemitism accusations than address the cost-of-living issues that drove Die Linke’s victory.
John Prideaux, our executive editor, on the rise of a new political class from the activist left