Germany’s Berlin, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania states head to polls
About 3.8 million voters in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are heading to polls on Sunday.
Voters in two German states will go to the polls on Sunday, as far-right and far-left gains threaten to affect the political standing of Chancellor Friedrich Merz.
Merz, according to a report by the AFP news agency, has scheduled a crisis meeting of his Christian Democratic Union party (CDU), skipped this week’s UN General Assembly meeting in New York, and cleared his calendar to deal with potential aftershocks from the votes in Berlin and the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
Pressure on Merz has been mounting after the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) delivered a major defeat to his CDU party two weeks ago in the key state of Saxony-Anhalt. The AfD fell just short of an absolute majority, which would have allowed it to govern on its own.
In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Merz’s party is an onlooker to the main battle between the SPD’s popular state premier Manuela Schwesig and the AfD’s lead candidate, former radio presenter Leif-Erik Holm.