Can Friedrich Merz survive Germanys super election year? – Mar 19 2026

Mar 19, 2026
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By James Angelos

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz speaks to journalists as he arrives at the EU headquarters in Brussels on March 19, 2026. | Magali Cohen/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images

Regional and local elections in Germany don’t usually have big ramifications for national politics. This year’s Superwahljahr is different.

A series of five state elections and a wave of local contests across the country — what Germans are calling a “super election year” — is exposing the steady erosion of the traditional left-right dichotomy that has defined parliamentary democracy in Germany and beyond for the better part of two centuries as weakened mainstream parties on both sides of the spectrum band together to contain the rising far right.

No single contest this year will land a death blow to Friedrich Merz’s centrist coalition — a marriage of the chancellor’s conservative bloc with the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) — but the aggregate effect spells trouble.

This will be particularly evident later in the year when two elections take place in the former East Germany, where the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is ascendant. AfD leaders hope their dominance in the East will propel them to real governing power for the first time since the party’s 2013 founding when voters go to the polls in the largely rural eastern states of Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in September. Polls in the first state show the AfD near 40 percent, within striking distance of an absolute majority.

One reason for the AfD’s popularity in the East is that the centrist big-tent parties, or Volksparteien, that long dominated the postwar political landscape in West Germany after World War II didn’t establish deep roots in the formerly communist region after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Resentments over remaining economic disparities with the West persist, and eastern Germans are also far more likely to sympathize with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

But the lesser told story is the degree to which the far right is establishing a stronger foothold in the more populous western part of Germany. In an election earlier this month in the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg — home to iconic carmakers Mercedes-Benz and Porsche — the AfD nearly doubled its support, coming in a strong third by capitalizing on rising economic grievances as Germany’s once vaunted manufacturing sector declines, and angst over the fallout of wars abroad rises.

Ultimately the center-left Greens won in Baden-Württemberg because of the popularity of their lead candidate in the state. Merz’s coalition partners — the SPD, the oldest political party in the country — utterly collapsed, booking their worst election performance on the national or state level since World War II. That means the Greens will be forced to govern with Merz’s second-place conservatives, as it’s the only possible majority coalition that doesn’t involve the AfD.

That outcome underscores the underlying problem: German politics, as in France, increasingly resembles a reductive contest between the far-right versus the mainstream. That dialectic seems to be benefiting the AfD, which is rising despite its internal dysfunction and the lack of a charismatic leader. A vote for the AfD is simply a vote against the rest of them.

Following the elections in the East, forming majority governments in state parliaments will be next to impossible. In Saxony-Anhalt, based on current polling, Merz’s CDU would need to form an ideologically contradictory coalition with three left-wing parties to barely cobble together a majority government — including the radical left Die Linke, a group it has promised not to govern with and which has roots in the East German communist party.

That chaos may be a sign of things to come on the national level. Merz has vowed that his conservatives will not govern in coalition with the AfD, maintaining the postwar “firewall” around the far right both federally and in the states. In truth, he has no good choice in the matter. Bringing the far right into government would lend the AfD new legitimacy that could only help it. Yet the alternative may hardly be better: the current far-right vs. the establishment dichotomy seems to only be working in the AfD’s favor.

Welcome to POLITICO Forecast. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at forecast@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at jangelos@politico.eu@JamesAngelos.

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Yair Golan, head of the left-wing Democrats party, addresses Israeli anti-government protesters in Tel Aviv on Nov. 8, 2025. | Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images

As a retired general in the Israeli Defense Forces, Yair Golan won attention after the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, when he jumped into action to help save injured Nova Festival attendees. He’s since emerged as a sharp critic of how Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has directed Israel’s war in Gaza. Now, Golan leads Israel’s left-wing opposition party alliance, which is gearing up for elections in October.

In a wide-ranging conversation with Til Biermann, a reporter with BILD, part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters network, which includes POLITICO, Golan spoke about the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, Israel’s military efforts in the West Bank, and the ongoing war in Iran.

“Let’s start from the end,” Golan said. “Israel will not send ground troops into Iran, and neither will the Americans. … Regime change is a heartfelt wish, a dream.”

Read the full interview in WELT.

Regarding the conflict with Iran, where there is hope that Iranians will take to the streets and drive out the regime — do you think that is even possible without ‘boots on the ground’?

Let’s start from the end: Israel will not send ground troops into Iran, and neither will the Americans. One of the most important things in war is to set realistic goals beforehand that can actually be achieved.

Regime change is a heartfelt wish, a dream. But it is not a goal where we can say: “If we use these means and carry out these plans, the regime will fall.” That doesn’t exist; it won’t happen.

That is why I am in favor of shaking the regime. I am in favor of stripping the Iranian regime of its nuclear capabilities and its ability to attack Israel with long-range missiles. But to say our goal is to topple the regime, [that] is not realistic. You can’t say ‘we do A, B, and C and then that happens.’ Anyone who talks like that is, at best, unprofessional, and at worst, a political charlatan.

What do you say about what is currently happening in the West Bank? The German Ambassador Steffen Seibert wrote on X that one can and must simultaneously condemn Iran firing missiles at civilians in Israel and what settlers in the West Bank are doing to Palestinians. There have been deaths, and the Israeli police don’t seem to be intervening.

What is happening in Israel today is related to what is occurring on a higher level. The Israeli government starts or continues wars without the ability to end them. And this goes against traditional Israeli security doctrine, which dictates implementing short and decisive military campaigns. We are currently in the midst of campaigns that are dragging on indefinitely.

Instead of saying ‘how can we improve the security situation and reduce political tensions in the long run,’ this government constantly pours fuel on the fire. This means the government doesn’t close fronts; it leaves them open and worsens the security situation of the state of Israel.

That is why I no longer have any expectations of this government. We must replace it as quickly as possible. Because if we want Israel to become a serious partner for moderate countries in the Middle East again — and not another radical force like Iran, Hamas, or Turkey led by the Muslim Brotherhood — we must send this government home.

We have been in a constant state of war for two and a half years. Since this government has been in power, there hasn’t been a single day of peace. It’s completely crazy. This massive effort is wearing down Israeli citizens and drying up the Israeli economy. Because of interest, our children and grandchildren will still be bearing these enormous costs. Therefore, this destructive path must be abandoned. And that can only happen through political change.

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