Mecklenburg‑Western Pomerania has elected a new state parliament. The AfD (Alternative for Germany) won, while the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) led by Manuela Schwesig held on to second place – and the CDU (Christian Democratic Union), for the first time in the history of the Federal Republic, failed to win seats in a state parliament. That the party would end up below five per cent was clear from the data prediction by the journalist duo Mahdalová & Škop from the moment election night had barely begun. The public broadcasters' projections, meanwhile, kept the CDU above the line until after ten in the evening.
As for the Christian Democratic CDU, its worst result until now was the nine per cent it won in Bremen in 1951. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance also stayed just below the threshold (4.8%), and the liberals of the FDP collapsed from 5.8 to one per cent. Turnout rose to 78.1 per cent, by more than seven points.
It is a result that will go into political science textbooks: the Christian Democrats finished on 4.9 per cent – and for the first time since the Federal Republic was founded, one of the traditional "people's parties" has dropped out of a state parliament.
On Sunday 20 September, Alternative for Germany won in Mecklenburg‑Western Pomerania with 38.2 per cent of the vote and, for the first time, became the largest group in the state parliament in Schwerin. The SPD led by Manuela Schwesig took 35.5 per cent and defended second place; the Left (6.5%) and the Greens (5.7%) also entered parliament.
Exactly a year ago, in Stralsund, Minister‑President Schwesig presented Angela Merkel with the state's order of merit. It was a tribute to the Christian Democratic politician who had her constituency here. Yet the same state had the neo‑Nazi NPD in its parliament from 2006 to 2016. And it is precisely here, in Angela Merkel's "electoral home" and an old stronghold of the far right, that a result has landed which has shaken the whole republic.
The shock, of course, does not come from the AfD's narrow but unsurprising victory, but from the fact that the former chancellor's party will not be represented in the state parliament that covers her home constituency.
We knew the result from the start of the count
CDU share of second votes (%) • 20–21 September 2026, CEST
None of the 116 updates of the DataTimes.cz prediction put the CDU above the 5% threshold. The public broadcasters first moved it below the line only at 22:13.
The chart compares the point prediction with the CDU's share of the valid second votes counted so far. The archive does not contain running uncertainty intervals, so the probability of the party failing to get in at any given minute cannot be determined retrospectively.
This is exactly the difference between the data prediction and what viewers saw at the time. The forecast and the projections of the public broadcasters left the question open for a long time – and the news agency headline "Count complete: CDU out" came only once the official count had finished. The DataTimes model answered the question "will they get in or not?" shortly after seven, and unambiguously: the CDU will not get in.
When the polling stations closed at six in the evening, the exit polls of the public broadcasters put the CDU right on the edge: ZDF gave it exactly 5.0 per cent, ARD 5.5. Half an hour later, at 18:27, came the first projection by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, already based on actually counted votes – and it put the CDU at 5.1 per cent, "a mere tenth of a point above the five per cent threshold", as the German media wrote.
Until late in the evening, the public broadcasters ARD and ZDF thus kept the Christian Democrats on the threshold or just above it; headlines asked whether the party faced a "worst-case scenario", and there was similar "trembling" over whether the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance would get in. Only at 22:13 on ARD and at 22:20 on ZDF did the CDU fall below five per cent in the projections for the first time, to 4.9.
What mattered was the side of the line, not the decimal
Estimates of the CDU share (%) against the final result of 4.888% • 20–21 September 2026
The first prediction differed from the result by more than the ZDF exit poll did. But it was on the right side of the threshold – and within an hour it came within hundredths of the result.
Why was it not enough simply to look at the running figure? Because precincts report their results gradually. If the first to report include places where a party has stronger support, it looks more successful in the running total than it will eventually be across the whole state – for another party it may be the other way round. The model uses the results of the 2025 federal election to find similar units and, based on the results just counted, continuously adjusts its estimate of each party's swing; from the reported part it thus also calculates the part not yet counted.
The first record in the mahdalova-skop.cz (DataTimes.cz) archive is timestamped 19:15:32 and contains officially counted data from roughly a quarter of the registered precincts. In their running total the CDU had 3.8 per cent, and the DataTimes.cz prediction model estimated its final result at almost a percentage point higher – but at the same time it was clear from it that the CDU would not get into the state parliament.
Three quarters of an hour later, at eight in the evening, the CDU's running count jumped to 4.2 per cent and the DataTimes.cz election prediction moved to 4.78. So the Christian Democrats were collecting votes and the party's share kept rising – but the model calculated that the CDU would not cross the five per cent threshold needed to enter parliament; not once during the count did it swing above five per cent, and the highest predicted value was 4.9 per cent, which is ultimately what happened. The first complete official count in the data of the state election office (Landeswahlleitung M‑V) is timestamped 00:06:50 the following morning, with a value of 4.888 per cent.
Two rounds of cheering and canapés in Berlin
At the AfD's election party in Schwerin, loud cheering broke out twice, reported the news site T‑online. The first time at 18:00, when in the first forecast the AfD's bar overtook that of the Social Democrats. The second time at around nine in the evening, when the CDU fell below five per cent in the projections. "We are the people's party of Mecklenburg‑Western Pomerania," the candidate for minister‑president Leif‑Erik Holm called from the stage, adding that the CDU had been "pulverised". Co‑leader Tino Chrupalla spoke of the party having "dethroned" Minister‑President Schwesig.
Victory alone, however, is not enough to govern. Holm himself will not sit in the state parliament: in his constituency of Schwerin I he lost to Schwesig by 28.2 to 54.4 per cent of the first votes, and he was not on the state party list, the website Junge Freiheit pointed out. And even within the party there was a sober word – the parliamentary group's chief whip Thore Stein told t‑online on the sidelines of the party simply: "We cannot be satisfied." However much Holm spoke of a "mandate to form a government", with such limited options for cooperation he will not put together a majority. None of the three other parties in parliament wants to work with the AfD, and Schwesig can continue to govern with the Left and the Greens – together they will have 39 of the 71 seats.
Schwesig herself did not hold back her relief at the election party. "That was a race to catch up," she told the daily Tagesspiegel, referring to the fact that her party had been at nineteen per cent in the polls a year ago. She stressed that the AfD – in part right-wing extremist – would not be able to form a government, and that "the majority has clearly chosen the democratic parties". Asked on ZDF's heute journal whether she wanted to remain minister‑president, she answered with a single word: "Yes!"
In Schwerin, meanwhile, the CDU's state leader Daniel Peters fought to the last for bare survival. "This state needs the CDU," he told his supporters, according to the portal web.de, spoke of "miserable conditions" and a "fight for existence", and congratulated the winners Schwesig and Holm.
The real decisions, however, were being made a few hundred kilometres away, at the CDU headquarters in Berlin. Thirteen minutes after the first figures, Friedrich Merz stepped out in front of the cameras in the Helmut‑Kohl‑Saal. In Reuters photographs from that evening he looks dejected – head slightly bowed, eyes on the floor, the corners of his mouth turned down. A man who has just lost, even if he will not admit it in words. There was nothing to gloss over, he reportedly said, "it is a debacle" – at a moment when the CDU was hovering between five and five and a half per cent; and in our prediction we already knew that within a few hours it would be even worse for the CDU. And then came a double blow – the defeat in Mecklenburg was compounded by a slump in Berlin, where the CDU finished behind the winning Left. Merz had deliberately summoned the entire party executive to the Konrad Adenauer House for the evening so that the situation would not get out of control; according to T‑online, lasagne and canapés were served and most of those present left at around eight, "mostly without a word". With his quick appearance he wanted, according to the paper, to get ahead of the wave – to keep the interpretation of the result in his own hands and pre-empt a debate about resignation. He announced that he would remain chancellor and party leader and that the government's reform course must continue. His words spoke of a fight, his face of defeat.
Criticism followed immediately. The political scientist Karl‑Rudolf Korte spoke on ZDF of the "ruins of the people's parties" and of the entire political centre losing. The leader of the Left's parliamentary group, Heidi Reichinnek, called Merz's appearance a media stunt without substance and accused him of once again presenting as a solution policies that voters had repeatedly rejected.
An honour for Merkel, not a single seat for her party
Let us return to the beginning, to Stralsund. When Manuela Schwesig presented Angela Merkel with the state's order there last September, the state government recalled her part in building the A20 motorway and the bridge to Rügen, and in supporting Stralsund's museums. It was a tribute to a specific politician – and, incidentally, a reminder of a time when the CDU helped shape this region. In 1990, with 38.3 per cent, it was the largest party in the state parliament. In 2021 it had 13.3 per cent and twelve seats. According to the preliminary results of this year's election, it has not a single one.
Over the course of election night, things kept improving for the CDU; the figure was slowly rising. What mattered was to estimate whether the remaining votes would be enough for five per cent. This was exactly the question the data prediction answered before the last precinct had been counted – and the answer was no.