Chancellor Friedrich Merz's CDU has fallen to 19% in a national INSA poll, hitting that level for the first time, and now trails the far-right AfD by 10 points at 29%. The drop comes after a week in which the CDU was knocked out of the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state parliament, the far-left Die Linke finished first in Berlin and Merz won his party leaders' backing to stay chancellor.

The AfD won Mecklenburg-Vorpommern with 38.3% of the vote, ahead of the SPD at 35.4%, while the CDU's 4.9% fell below the 5% threshold needed to enter the state parliament, its worst result in a state election since 1949. Merz called the outcome "a disaster" and said the CDU had been "crushed by the polarization between the SPD and the AfD," but refused to resign and vowed to push ahead with his economic reform agenda. He said the party was "just 1,000 votes short" of returning to parliament. In Berlin, Die Linke took 25.7% to the CDU's 18.8%.

The AfD, which won a record 44% in Saxony-Anhalt two weeks earlier, has predicted Merz will be out of office before the end of the year and hopes to displace the CDU as Germany's main conservative force. Co-leader Alice Weidel said the AfD is "clearly the new people's party in Germany" and that "the CDU, with Friedrich Merz, with a weak chancellor, cannot continue." Germany's other parties still refuse to govern with the AfD under the so-called firewall, and incumbent SPD premier Manuela Schwesig is expected to build a coalition in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern that keeps it out of office. In Berlin, police expressed concern over Die Linke's plans for policing and domestic intelligence, and WELT quoted one reaction from within the force as "Berlin has fallen."