In Baden-Württemberg, where the AfD finished a strong third, Merz’s conservatives came up shy in their effort to recapture power in a state that was long a conservative power base, while the SPD, Germany’s oldest political party, suffered its worst election performance since World War II, coming in with a humiliating 5.5 percent.
The election “was one of the darkest days I could imagine,” said Andreas Stoch, the SPD’s lead candidate in Baden-Württemberg. “To be honest, I never could have imagined standing in front of the press to announce a single-digit election result for the SPD.”
As political pressure rises, both the SPD and Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) are being pushed to reframe a series of policies — from reforms meant to restore economic competitiveness to the government’s stance on the war in Iran — to appeal to their bases. That could well make the divergent coalition far more fractious.
Merz on Monday said his coalition will endure — less out of conviction, but more due to the inescapable political reality, calling it “the only option for a stable government” in the political center given the rise of radical parties.
“I have already spoken with the two party leaders of the SPD, and we agree that we will, of course, continue the work of the coalition and that we will also try to shape this work in the interests of the country so that we can emerge from our country’s economic weakness,” he said.
There’s another electoral test coming in less than two weeks, in the the small southwestern state of Rhineland-Palatinate. Polling suggests the SPD and CDU are neck and neck in the race to win the state, and that the AfD is poised to more than double its support.