Name: Where is Germany headed? Lessons from a key regional election | DW News
Uploaded: 2026-03-12T23:05:47.000Z
Duration: 11 min 11 s
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Basic passive voice

They're celebrating victory, yet their candidate was not expected to win.

Adverbs of manner

Jem Oezdemir, the green front runner in the German state of Baden Wurtenberg, was hopelessly behind in the polls.

These surveys starting in October 2025 show how the Greens ended up overtaking the center right CDU at the last moment.

And who should be worried about the ramifications of that victory?

Specifically here, where I am at the moment in Berlin, the German capital.

But before we talk about those ramifications, let me explain why the official results are so unusual.

Above you have the winning party, the Greens.

Imagine, despite being the ruling party in the state, they were polling at only 17% a few months back in November.

Below that you have the cdu, also the party of Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

They made actual gains compared to the last election, but

basically lost a 14% advantage according to some polls.

Of course, there's also the far right afd.

They made significant inroads and doubled their results from the last elections.

And then you have the left of center social democrats, the SPD, and

You need 5% to make it into a German parliament.

And the Social Democrats only made it by a hair.

They that's something that 10 years ago would have been unthinkable.

First, let's take a look what this means for the current German government, which is a coalition between the center right Christian Democrats, the CDU and the Social Democrats, the SPD especially.

The result of the SBD could be a real problem going forward.

On the day after the election, officials from the SPD gathered in Berlin.

The discussion in the morning was difficult as well.

It is absolutely clear that this saddens us greatly.

Many Social Democrats in Europe have their traditional core constituents no longer vote for them.

I sat down and had a conversation with Lukas Rudolph.

My question to him, why won't workers and middle class employees vote for their traditional go to party anymore?

Well, they have been captured, I guess, so to say at least in part or in relevant parts by the fringes of the electoral system.

So on the one hand side, the IFT predominantly, I guess, but then also the left in parts.

And I guess this does not only affect the SBD's voter base among the working class, but

Speaking from the perspective of the sbd, of course.

Here are the results of the SBD in all federal elections since 2002.

And here are the numbers for the state of Baden Wurtenberg.

It's basically only going in one direction, down.

The decline of the SPD coincides with the rise of another party, the far right afd.

The AFD is the only conservative force that managed, despite this polarization between the CDU and the Greens, to achieve a truly significant result.

I ran the numbers for the AFD on the past elections.

Remember, the party hasn't been around a long time yet.

Both in federal elections and state elections in Baden Wurtenberg, the AFD is going up significantly.

All across Germany, the success of the AFD has obviously become a huge factor in German politics, with its focus on migration, on nation and on identity.

And it's forced political parties to work together that probably would have avoided working together in the past, like the SPD and the cdu.

The SPD bosses, Lars Klingbeil and Berbel Bass know that their party needs to build a clearer case of why people should vote for them.

But that's hard to do if you're stuck in a coalition with the center right cdu.

I guess the SPD has really a hard time sharpening its profile.

They have been in government, with one exception, for now, in federal government for now over 26 years.

And that means finding compromise on all sorts of things and being made responsible for for economic difficulties in Germany and so on and so forth.

That begs the question, what happens when the SPD decides to sharpen its profile while still governing with the cdu?

Of course they are in government, but then they also have to prove themselves in government.

And what you usually have to do then is sharpen your profile against your coalition partner.

And that will make it super difficult for the current federal federal level government to find compromise on major reforms that are needed right now in the country.

Those reforms have a lot to do with the economic and financial situation of the country.

Germany's industrial sector is in decline.

And guess which region is especially hard hit?

Baden Wittenberg with Mercedes, Porsche and Bosch.

So the car manufacturers and everything that's connected to them.

The polls show that the economy was the number one topic for voters in the state elections despite the wars, despite the high profile of migration, as the saying goes, it's still the economy, stupid.

A message that's also heard loud and clear in the German capital.

And that brings us back to Jem Mercedemir, the winning candidate in Baden Wurtenberg of the Greens, a party that regularly ends up on the lower side of the polls for its economic competence.

A majority of voters in Baden Wurtenberg also find the Greens in Berlin.

Here you see their party bosses overbearing and too focused on protecting the climate.

So why do a lot of people in his state still trust Ozdemir to solve their problems?

We have raised many expectations among the people of Baden Wurttemberg that the focus should be on the welfare of the state, not party interests.

So there's a clear distancing from the party in Berlin, and

with that, a strong focus on the man himself.

As one of the best known politicians in the state, even the country.

As the son of Turkish immigrants, he's repeatedly been the first to hold a certain political office with this particular background.

That would also be true if the regional parliament elects him as state premier.

My colleague Michaela Kufner talked to him about that after the election.

So I see this also as an obligation to help every child to develop its full potential.

So to prove that everybody can become whatever he or she wants to become.

Despite his roots, he's a kid from Baden Wurtenberg, born and bred there.

Many people in the region see him as one of their own.

In polls, his popularity ranked far higher than those of his opponents.