Merz’s conservatives win key state vote despite far-right surge

BERLIN — Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative party won an election in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate, giving the German leader a much-needed victory. While Merz’s party will welcome the result, there will be plenty of concern at the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party more than doubling its vote share. “This is historic for us,” Jens Spahn, the Christian Democratic Union’s parliamentary group leader in Berlin, told public broadcaster ARD on Sunday. “It gives us in the CDU a boost at the federal level. But of course, the credit goes above all to our colleagues on the ground,” he added. The conservative and far-right gains come at the expense of Merz’s federal coalition partners, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which came second in the small state of around 4 million inhabitants bordering France, Luxembourg and Belgium. The SPD’s defeat at the hands of its coalition partner could plunge it deeper into crisis nationally and destabilize the government in Berlin as the party seeks to retrench and appeal to what’s left of its left-leaning base. The SPD’s vote share collapsed by around 10 percentage points to 25.9 percent. Merz’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), meanwhile, came first with 31 percent of the vote, taking control of the state premiership from the SPD after 35 years in opposition. The CDU’s lead candidate in Rhineland-Palatinate, Gordon Schnieder, pointed to a combative campaign. “We had that will to win, I’ve felt it over the past few months,” Schnieder said on ARD television. The biggest winner in terms of vote share gained is the AfD, though, which more than doubled its support to 19.5 percent compared with the last state election five years ago when it got 8.3 percent of the vote. The strong showing comes after the AfD’s third-place performance in a state election in Baden-Württemberg earlier this month, illustrating how the party has been able to gain ground outside its eastern strongholds. The outcome in Rhineland-Palatinate is the AfD’s best-ever result in a western German state. The election in Rhineland-Palatinate was the second of five state races to be held this year in what Germans are calling a Superwahljahr — or “super election year” — that is seen as a key test of the national mood as the AfD seeks to overtake Merz’s conservatives in national polls. The AfD is on track to secure big victories in two eastern states in votes set for September, according to polls. “We have achieved record results,” Alice Weidel, one of the AfD’s national leaders, said on Sunday. “Voters appreciate the work we’ve done as opposition party, and we will continue on this path so that we can join the government in the next election.” To do so, the party would need to tear down Germany’s so-called firewall, which has been in place since the end of World War II and has prevented the far right from governing in a coalition with mainstream parties at both the state and national level. For the struggling SPD, the result was another big setback. The party had its worst performance in a state election since the end of World War II earlier this month in Baden-Württemberg, getting just 5.5 percent of votes cast. The Rhineland-Palatinate compounds its downward trajectory. These poor results are expected to put increasing pressure on the SPD’s national leadership. “I know this result will spark personnel debates,” Lars Klingbeil, one of the SPD’s national leaders and the country’s finance minister, said on national television. “I want us to talk openly about the question: How can we now achieve the best outcome for the Social Democrats?” The SPD had another big setback in Munich on Sunday, where it lost the runoff round of the mayoral race by a double-figures margin to the Greens. The SPD had governed the Bavarian capital for decades. “We can expect the SPD to now try to assert its own positions more forcefully within this coalition,” said Sabine Kropp, a political science professor at the Free University Berlin. “That will certainly not make governing easier for Friedrich Merz.” Merz, though, can take some solace from the solid performance of the CDU in the face of growing anxiety about Germany’s economic future as the country’s key manufacturing sectors decline and the fallout mounts from the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. The party improved on its performance compared to the last election in Rhineland-Palatinate, gaining more than 3 percentage points compared to its 27.7 percent haul last time. Jens Spahn, the CDU’s general secretary, stuck to his party’s key messages on Sunday. “We need growth again in Germany after three years of recession and stagnation,” he said. “That is the defining issue for the nation. It is also the defining issue for the [federal] coalition … We are very aware of that.” The AfD has increasingly been hitting Merz on that theme, with some success. In two states in the former East Germany where elections are set for September, the AfD is so far ahead in polls that its leaders hope to secure an absolute majority in at least one of the contests, a result that would bring the party to real governing power for the first time since its founding in 2013. “While you go on and on about world politics, German industry is collapsing,” Weidel, the AfD leader, told Merz in the Bundestag earlier this week. “The exodus is in full swing.” This article has been updated.