Merz vows to press ahead with reforms after historic German state election defeat

BERLIN -- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suffered a bruising electoral setback in two state elections on Sunday, including a historic defeat for his party, but vowed to press ahead with potentially painful reforms to Europe’s biggest economy.

Projections by public broadcaster ARD on Sunday night indicated that Merz's center-right Christian Democratic Union, or CDU, came in with just 5% in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania — the lowest result since World War II for the party in any state. The anti-migration, Russia-friendly Alternative for Germany, or AfD, party made significant gains Sunday. The projections were based on exit polls and partial counting for ARD television.

Merz acknowledged his party's result as a “disaster,” but struck a defiant note, rejecting any retreat from his government’s reform agenda. He argued that Germany’s economic and political problems made difficult and potentially unpopular reforms more urgent, not less so, and pledged to press ahead.

“What needs to be done now requires backbone, steadfastness, and patience,” Merz said in a statement shortly after the exit polls were announced on public television. “I will demonstrate these qualities as chairman of the CDU and, above all, as chancellor of our country.”

In Berlin, projections showed the CDU was to come in second with 19.1%, behind the Left party at 25.3%, according to ARD.

Merz’s authority was already damaged by CDU's stinging defeat to AfD in the Sept. 6 election in the small eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. That result shocked many Germans who had believed their country had developed an immunity to nationalism and assertions of racial superiority after confronting the horrors of its Nazi past through education and laws to outlaw persecution.

On Sunday, AfD also made big gains in both states. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, it garnered 37.9% of the vote, and in Berlin it achieved 16.2%, according to ARD. But it was nowhere close to being able to form a regional government.

AfD's national co-leader, Alice Weidel, said on ZDF television that "we have displaced the CDU as the people’s party.”

She added that “we have a great deal to offer our voters, namely political change in this country."

However, in an apparent reference to the far-right party, Merz said that his government’s reforms would be “the antidote to the poison of authoritarianism, which is penetrating ever deeper into our society as the fascination with authoritarianism grows.”

The government’s reforms include cuts to income tax for low- and middle-income families, an overhaul of the creaking pension system and a reduction of Germany's stifling bureaucracy.

Merz, 70, became Germany’s leader 16 months ago with promises to turn around an economy that has barely grown in years. But he has failed to lift a sullen national mood and become deeply unpopular.

The strong showing of AfD in the Saxony-Anhalt election, where it has the best chance yet of forming the country’s first far-right regional government since World War II, had further weakened the chancellor's standing on the national level as well.

In the past two weeks, there had been calls, even from within his own party, for him to be replaced as chancellor, although no top-level allies have called publicly for his departure, and many warned against “personnel debates.”

Philipp Amthor, a prominent CDU figure from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania who now manages relations between the federal and state governments at the chancellery, said Sunday night that one problem in the campaign had been “the difficult personnel discussions” of recent weeks — an apparent reference to the speculation about Merz.

“It is good and right for these personnel discussions not to be continued now,” he said.