Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania braces for pivotal election amid AfD's shifting fortunes

Time Is Running Out

In less than five months, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will elect a new state parliament. Current polls suggest the far-right AfD could emerge as the strongest force in September. But even if that doesn't happen, should the party secure more than a third of the seats in Schwerin after the election, it could do what it has been practicing for years in Thuringia: obstruct and sabotage parliamentary processes.

That is precisely what Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania now aims to prevent. "We see how right-wing populist forces deliberately undermine institutions when given the chance," says Julian Barlen, leader of the SPD parliamentary group in the state legislature. With an eye on the AfD's tactics in Thuringia, he argues that "we must proactively protect our constitutional state while we still can."

Concretely, the state wants to safeguard against the AfD paralyzing the state constitutional court. Next week, the parliament will debate for the first time a draft bill to amend the state constitution, proposed by the red-red coalition of SPD Minister-President Manuela Schwesig and the opposition Greens.

The legislation comes late in the game. By early July, lawmakers will adjourn for summer recess and the heated election campaign. More critically, a constitutional amendment requires a two-thirds majority—meaning the SPD, Left Party, and Greens depend on the CDU, which is digging in its heels.

CDU: Stay Calm

Daniel Peters, CDU state and parliamentary group leader, acknowledges concerns about the AfD's growing strength but counters: "The moment's anxiety is no measure for eternity." Democratic resilience, he argues, isn't built "by ever-higher protective walls, but by citizens' trust." Besides, Peters insists, "we must trust our institutions to weather difficult phases in their current form."

The fact that the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt—where the AfD is also poised for major gains in September—recently co-led a preventive constitutional and parliamentary reform doesn't faze him. "Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has a different political dynamic," Peters claims. "Here, the SPD is exploiting the issue for a polarizing campaign aimed at securing the minister-president's political survival. That's thin on democracy."

Green Party lead candidate Claudia Müller dismisses the CDU's reasoning as flimsy. "The Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania CDU is hiding behind half-baked excuses to dodge responsibility," she says, urging: "This is about our state's future." SPD parliamentary leader Barlen agrees: "The issue is too important for partisan maneuvering."

Where Peters has a point: Minister-President Schwesig is indeed gearing up for a campaign built on simple messaging—me or the AfD, stability or chaos. It's a strategy Brandenburg's SPD Minister-President Dietmar Woidke successfully deployed in 2024, finishing ahead of the AfD. The catch? Every other democratic party was wiped out—including the CDU.

The same fate now looms over the CDU in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. SPD insiders suggest Peters and his team are posturing as contrarians for precisely that reason. Peters is also the CDU's top candidate for the September 20 election.

A Modest Reform, Not a Bold Stroke

What the SPD, Left Party, and Greens have proposed as a bill to counter the "risk of blockade by an authoritarian-populist blocking minority" is, compared to Saxony-Anhalt's anti-AfD initiative, more of a modest tweak than a sweeping overhaul. It focuses solely on raising the thresholds for electing constitutional judges.

Currently, members of the state constitutional court can only be elected by the state parliament with a two-thirds majority. The draft bill describes this as "sensible and important," but notes that in cases of difficult majorities, it can lead to protracted or even failed elections.

Now, a fallback mechanism is to be introduced: if the state parliament remains deadlocked, the constitutional court itself will propose three candidates for the vacant position. The state legislature can then select one—with an absolute majority sufficient for approval.

So far, so straightforward. But the original proposal was far more sweeping. Plans had included extending the deadline for electing the minister-president from the current four weeks after the new state parliament convenes to three months, preventing snap elections in the event of protracted coalition negotiations. That idea has long been abandoned, as has the Green Party's demand to strengthen the independence of the state audit office and the state agency for civic education.

A Deliberately Scaled-Back Bill

SPD politician Julian Barlen explains that after months of discussions with the CDU, no agreement could be reached on the "broader approach," so they "consciously narrowed our proposal for this new—and final—attempt to the core issue and the most urgent matter: better safeguarding the state constitutional court."

The CDU remains unmoved. Party leader Daniel Peters dismisses the scaled-back draft, stating: "Even a reduced proposal doesn't change the fact that this alters the constitutional framework—and we won't support that." The lines are firmly drawn, and with only three remaining session weeks, a compromise seems unlikely.

Once again, the real winner of this partisan dispute appears to be the far-right AfD. Ignoring the facts entirely, AfD parliamentary group leader Nikolaus Kramer has already accused the other parties of forming a "united front." "With these proposals, the red-red coalition underscores its problematic relationship with democratic transfers of power," Kramer claimed.

There is, however, a silver lining: the far-right party is no longer as close to power as it once was. While polls six months ago put its support as high as 40 percent, it has since slipped to 34 percent. Even so, that would still be enough to paralyze the institutions of the rule of law.