Polls have closed in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin, and the results are worse than expected for our floundering Chancellor, Friedrich Merz. The CDU has been bested by Die Linke (the Left Party) in Berlin, and still worse their showing in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is so bad it’s unclear they’ll make it into the Landtag at all.
Here’s exit poll data from ZDF for Meck-Pomm and Berlin …
…and here’s the slightly different prognosis from ARD:
These are mere prognoses and they’ll fluctuate slightly as the counting continues through tonight, but they’ll generally be accurate to within one or two points. We won’t know until late tonight whether the CDU in a historical first has failed to cross the 5% hurdle for representation in a state parliament, but as of now we can be certain that they logged their worst result in any election in the history of the Federal Republic, underperforming their heretofore worst performance in the Bremen 1951 election.
In both cases we will probably get leftist red-red-green governments consisting of Die Linke, SPD and Greens – under a Left Party mayor in Berlin, and under the Social Democrat Manuela Schwesig in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Once again I have a dinner appointment, but I’ll try to keep this post updated as count continues throughout the night.
UPDATE: CDU still hanging by a thread in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, both ZDF and ARD projections have them right at 5%, tendency declining as the count continues. BSW situation similar – right around 5% mark. Greens look secure with about 5.5%.
UPDATE II: The CDU is going to fall hundreds of votes short of the 5% cutoff for representation in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Landtag. About 40 districts remain to be counted as I type this, and short of a miracle there aren’t enough votes left in the uncounted ballots for the Union to make it from 4.84% (where they’re at presently) to 5% or higher. This has never happened before in the history of the Federal Republic and it may well spell the end of Friedrich Merz’s chancellorship. In some ways the destruction of the Union in MV is more significant even than the historic AfD victory in Sachsen-Anhalt on 6 September.