The elections this Sunday in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern yield two different winners, Die Linke and the Alternative for Germany (AfD), but a single political loser: the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) led by Friedrich Merz. They also deliver a warning that transcends these two states. The German party system continues to fragment, the protest vote solidifies, and regional elections are turning into successive plebiscites on a federal government that fails to translate its reform agenda into improvements for a substantial portion of the electorate. Yet, moreover, the discontent cuts across very different terrains and electorates, but does not necessarily translate in the same way. While in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern AfD channels discontent mainly as a protest vote and a challenge to the system, in Berlin Die Linke has managed to steer a significant portion of that discontent toward the material conditions of daily life. Two very different ways of politicizing insecurity.
“The German party system continues to fragment, the protest vote consolidates, and regional elections are becoming successive plebiscites on a federal government”
>The results are especially troubling for the CDU. Following the blow in Saxony-Anhalt, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern again reveal the difficulties for conservatives to contain AfD’s advance while at the same time preserving their own electoral space. Merz’s strategy of hardening positions, particularly on immigration, security, and social benefits, to win back voters situated on his right flank does not seem to be weakening AfD. If anything, it is the opposite, as radical-right forces widen their base in every election while the CDU loses ground. The most extreme case is Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where AfD sits around 37%, contesting first place with the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which is about 35.5%, while the CDU hovers dangerously near the 5% threshold. The most worrying data for Merz may be not only AfD’s growth, but the realization that the leading party of the German center-right could find itself on the brink of being expelled from a regional parliament.
The problem is that the response announced by the chancellor is to persist with his positions. “Reforms have to come,” he stated after the first projections. Yet within the coalition there is already debate about what exactly reform means. The Social Democratic candidate in Berlin, Steffen Krach, had summarized it during the campaign with particular clarity: what emerges from the federal government is not perceived as a reform program but as a succession of cuts. Housing, benefits, transport, pensions, or social protection are part of a discussion that directly affects daily life. The difference is not minor. When reform is identified with a loss of benefits, the deterioration of public services, or greater economic insecurity, the ground is widened for the protest vote.
“What comes from the federal government is not perceived as a program of reforms, but as a succession of cuts”
>Mecklenburg-Vorpommern offers one of the possible political translations of this discontent. AfD manages to assemble economic discontent, a sense of abandonment in part of eastern Germany, opposition to political elites, and distrust of the federal government, and tie all of it to immigration, security, identity, and sovereignty. Because the data tell us that we are no longer dealing with a force that mobilizes only an ideologically defined electorate. AfD broadens its base and becomes for a growing segment of voters the main instrument of sanction against the system.
Berlin, however, presents a different snapshot. There, too, discontent exists, AfD grows, and traditional parties retreat. But Die Linke has managed to seize the political meaning of that discontent from a different discourse, with an agenda almost opposite to the one dominating the rest of the federal political debate. The Elif Eralp-led campaign places material and daily concerns at the center, and above all one issue: housing, in a city where roughly 85% of households rent and where rising prices have radically altered the possibilities of housing access. And so, housing has consumed the entire campaign.
“The party of Elif Eralp has placed at the center of its campaign the material and daily concerns, and, above all, one: housing”
>There is also a fundamental political precedent. In 2021 a clear majority of Berliners backed in a referendum the socialization of housing owned by large real estate groups with more than 3,000 apartments. Five years later, that mandate remains unimplemented. Die Linke has made its immediate implementation one of the campaign’s axes, while the Greens are open to advancing in that direction and the SPD even has a convention-backed agreement committing to its execution, though with noticeably less enthusiasm. CDU and the Free Democratic Party (FDP), for their part, reject it.
In this sense, Berlin also hints that the so-called “Mamdani model” could work outside New York, at least as a mobilization strategy. It is not so much about copying his proposals as about reproducing a logic: abandoning a political competition dominated by the identity and security agenda to foreground what determines urban life. Mamdani built much of his victory on affordability of life—rent, transport, care—and on the idea that insecurity also means not being able to afford the city you live in. Die Linke has done something similar in Berlin. In a city that is mostly rented, housing has enabled turning a personal concern—being unable to pay rent—into a collective political issue.
“It’s not so much about copying Mamdani as about reproducing a logic: moving away from a political competition dominated by identity and security to foreground what determines daily life”
>The success of Die Linke thus allows for a new approach to an especially salient issue: insecurity, because it is also insecurity to not know how much rents will rise, whether it will be possible to continue living in the same neighborhood, or if children will be able to stay in the city. Against a German political agenda increasingly inclined to equate security with immigration, crime, borders, or police, Die Linke has expanded the concept to include residential, economic, and social security. That does not mean that traditional security issues disappeared from the Berlin campaign. Protecting critical infrastructure, new policing legislation, or knife-free zones all occupied a notable space. But they did not monopolize the conversation. The third discussion has been precisely the model of the city, and with it, a symbolic question: Elif Eralp could become Berlin’s first mayor of Turkish origin.
The comparison between the two states is particularly instructive. Not because Die Linke and AfD are equivalent phenomena—far from it—but because they show that discontent does not have a predetermined political translation. In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern it is channeled mainly as an opposition to the system and around identity, migration, and order issues. In Berlin, a substantial portion is organized around rents, redistribution, public services, and the right to the city.
These results (still provisional) also require refining the traditional east-west electoral division. Because while AfD remains much stronger in the former GDR states, its growth in Berlin and in western territories shows that that border explains less and less by itself the phenomenon. What changes between territories is not only the intensity of the discontent, but which actors manage to interpret it and endow it with political meaning.
“What changes between territories is not only the intensity of the discontent, but which actors manage to interpret it and endow it with political meaning”
>And there lies the real challenge for Friedrich Merz. After Saxony-Anhalt, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, it is increasingly difficult to maintain that simply hardening positions will win back AfD voters. The radical right does not retreat, and the CDU loses ground. But it also does not seem sufficient to present political reforms that a portion of the citizenry perceives as cuts.
Thus, these Sunday elections deliver a warning that goes beyond two regional legislatures. Germany is not moving merely toward a single political extreme. It is witnessing a contest over who can interpret increasingly deep economic, social, territorial, and cultural insecurities. One of Europe’s most resilient political systems is being redrawn, where the two center-right and center-left forces (CDU and SPD) lose weight and even centrality. It is worth taking note of the electoral behavior unfolding in the German territory, because it shows that discontent does not belong to any single political owner. And it shows that what truly matters is who can explain it, give it meaning, and turn it into a political proposal.
