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'Deeply shocked' by the far right's regional victory on Sunday, the chancellor now has to contend with his coalition partner, the Social Democratic Party, which wants to renegotiate pension reform. For its part, Alternative for Germany says it aims to reach 40% of the vote at the federal level by 2029.
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It was a visibly shaken Friedrich Merz who addressed journalists in Berlin on Monday, September 7. The dramatic collapse of the chancellor's party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), in Sunday's regional elections in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, felt like a personal rebuke for the leader who has been in power since May 2025. Back in 2018, Merz had promised to halve the far right's vote share if he ever led the country. Now, he was confronted with a painful reality: Not only is Alternative for Germany (AfD), which has already held a quarter of Bundestag seats since 2025, now set to lead one of Germany's 16 states – a first since World War II – but it is the CDU that has seen its vote share halved, finding itself "in the opposition," as acknowledged by Sven Schulze, the party's candidate in the region, which Christian Democrats had run without interruption since 2002.
From Sunday evening, attention quickly shifted from Magdeburg, the Saxony-Anhalt capital, to Berlin. "We are all deeply shocked," the chancellor admitted the day after the vote, having previously kept silent. "Yesterday, something changed – not only in Saxony-Anhalt, but across Germany. And this election result will have repercussions. It will also affect the international situation," he added, noting the congratulatory messages AfD received from the United States and Russia.
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