Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with a donation.

Germany is now facing the same systemic crisis that its leaders once diagnosed in other European countries, such as Greece, Portugal, and Spain, in the early 2010s. Economic woes and anti-immigrant sentiment have given rise to anti-establishment politics, which in turn is reshaping the country’s political landscape. Indeed, after the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party achieved a historic result in the Saxony-Anhalt state in eastern Germany, the fascists have just won another state election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and also made significant gains in the election held in the city-state of Berlin. But it was the radical left Die Linke (the Left), the successor to the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) of the former German Democratic Republic, that won the most votes in Berlin.

In the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, a largely rural state in Germany’s former communist east where unemployment stands at nearly 8 percent, well above the national average, the AfD took first place by winning 38.2 percent of the vote on September 20, while the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) came second with 35.5 percent. Chancellor Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) got routed as it failed to cross the 5 percent threshold, thus not winning a single seat in the state parliament for the first time anywhere in Germany. Merz described the result as “a disaster” for his party but vowed to stay in office and press ahead with his unpopular reforms to the German economy, which consist of imposing austerity measures and do not touch the rich. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) also failed to clear the 5 percent threshold, while Die Linke took just 6.5 percent and the Greens took 5.7 percent.

The state election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was another resounding victory for the AfD and represented something of a rebuke of the SPD-Die Linke coalition that has governed in the state capital of Schwerin for the past five years. Indeed, what is most unexpected about the result in this German state election is that, unlike Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was not considered an AfD stronghold. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has the lowest proportion of immigrants among all of Germany’s 16 federal states.

In the Berlin state election, Die Linke finished first with 25.3 percent of the vote, ahead of the CDU which got 19 percent, while the AfD won 16 percent, up 6.9 points from the last election.

Die Linke more than doubled the vote percentage it received in the previous Berlin state election in 2023, when it won 12.2 percent of the vote. The party cannot form a government alone, but is clearly in a position to lead a coalition government with the Social Democrats and the Greens and could see its........

© Truthout