Merz Clings to Neoliberal Agenda as CDU Collapses, Left and AfD Surge in Historic Rebuke
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Despite the CDU’s humiliating state-election defeats, Chancellor Merz vows to push ahead with regressive tax and welfare reforms, while voters turn to Die Linke and AfD for real change.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz addressed the nation from the CDU headquarters in Berlin after exit polls revealed the party’s catastrophic state-election results—the worst since World War II. The CDU, long a pillar of neoliberal orthodoxy, plummeted to a mere 4.9% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, failing even to cross the parliamentary threshold, and lagged far behind in Berlin, where Die Linke surged to 25.7% and the far-right AfD seized 16.3%.
Merz, presiding over the collapse of the political center, called the night a “disaster” but stubbornly insisted on continuing his federal programme of tax and welfare reforms—policies that have long favored the wealthy and punished working people. He absurdly claimed these measures are “the antidote to the poison of authoritarianism,” ignoring how austerity and inequality fuel the very extremism he claims to oppose. Merz said that implementing his agenda would require “backbone, steadfastness and patience,” signaling more hardship for ordinary Germans.
AfD leader Alice Weidel, representing the emboldened far right, told ARD that Merz is “the wrong chancellor for the CDU” and that his failures only strengthen her party. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the AfD outpaced the SPD, though incumbent SPD governor Manuela Schwesig, who finished second with 35%, is expected to cling to power by forming a coalition.
In Berlin, Die Linke’s leader Elif Eralp, whose family fled Turkey’s 1980 coup, offered a vision of hope: pledging to make the city affordable for all, proposing a rent cap and the expropriation of apartments hoarded by corporate landlords. Eralp declared that Berliners would never accept the AfD’s hateful agenda, proclaiming that “love and justice have triumphed over hate.”
Germany’s mixed electoral system demands coalition-building, and analysts note that Merz, whose CDU co-governs with the SPD at the federal level, now faces an uphill battle in a fractured political landscape. Sudha David-Wilp of the German Marshall Fund observed that Merz is unlikely to resign, clinging to power despite his party’s historic rejection and the growing call for real progressive change.