Latest German election humiliation puts Merz on borrowed time as CDU unrest grows
Deborah Colein Berlin
Chancellor acknowledges disastrous state election results but vow to push on is likely to further alienate voters, and his own party
Europe live – latest updatesMon 21 Sep 2026 11.04 BSTShare
Friedrich Merz called it a “disaster”, and that was even before the full scale of the catastrophe for himself and his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) came into view after Sunday’s state elections.
In what one outlet called a “power move”, the German chancellor made a highly unusual televised speech just minutes after polls closed in the states of Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, attempting to get ahead of the narrative with a pledge to stay on and fight for his economic recovery programme.
But as the results trickled in, it became apparent that the CDU had not only scored its worst-ever result in a state election, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, it had crashed out of a regional parliament altogether for the first time in postwar history with just 4.9% of the vote in the region on the Baltic coast.
The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) came out on top for the third time in a German state, drawing 38% against 35.5% for the centre-left Social Democrats, Merz’s federal coalition partner.
About:
CDU/CSU: the sister parties
The sister parties CDU and CSU, known as the “Union” for short, form the traditionally strongest party in Germany.
05.05.2025
Here we introduce you to the German political parties that are represented in the Bundestag. In Germany, parties only win seats in parliament if they obtain five percent or more of the votes.
The party:
CDU / CSU
Christian Democratic Union of Germany / Christian-Social UnionEstablished:
26 June 1945Members:
CDU 363.000 / CSU 126.000 (2024)MPs in the Bundestag:
208 of 630 MPs in totalHistoric figures:
Konrad Adenauer, first Federal Chancellor from 1949 to 1963
Ludwig Erhard, Federal Chancellor from 1963 to 1966
Kurt Georg Kiesinger, Federal Chancellor from 1966 to 1969
Helmut Kohl, Federal Chancellor from 1982 to 1998
Angela Merkel, first female Federal Chancellor from 2005 to 2021Profile: The CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, were established as non-denominational Christian parties directly after the Second World War by members of the civilian resistance to National Socialism. Their core values are rooted in Catholic social doctrine, Conservativism, and commitment to a liberal (social) market economy that is provided with a regulatory framework of rules and laws by the state. The CDU/CSU regards itself as a “catch-all party” that expressly combines many different interests and therefore aims to speak and develop policies on behalf of a very large part of the population.
The CDU runs for election in all Germany’s states apart from Bavaria, where its place is taken by the CSU, which only stands in Bavaria. The two parties are often known colloquially as “the Union”. In the Bundestag they form the CDU/CSU parliamentary group. The “Union” is traditionally the strongest party in Germany and has governed the country the longest in various coalitions.
Website: www.cdu.de
Links to portraits of other political parties:
SPD, Greens, FDP, Linke, AfD
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