BERLIN: German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives on Monday revelled in a regional election win even as their national coalition partner faced existential questions after another disappointing performance.
Voters in Rhineland-Palatinate state backed Merz’s Christian Democrats (CDU) with 31 percent of the vote on Sunday, knocking the Social Democrats (SPD), who scored 25.9 percent, from power for the first time in 35 years.
The latest in a long string of defeats for the SPD plunged the centre-left party into crisis, as some internal critics called for Vice Chancellor and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil to step down as its national co-chairman.
Klingbeil called the vote’s outcome “catastrophic” for the once-storied labour party but said he would not be resigning from his post.
“We will not plunge the second largest governing party into chaos and enter a process where we are focused on ourselves and do not care about the country,” he told a Berlin press conference.
For Merz, who has faced poor popularity ratings and struggled to meet his campaign pledge of rebooting Europe’s biggest economy after years of stagnation, his party’s success offers a much-needed boost.
But the CDU’s win in Rhineland-Palatinate could also pose new challenges for Merz, wrote ING analyst Carsten Brzeski.
With the SPD “close to an existential crisis”, he wrote, the centre-left party “could be left with only two extreme options: go all-in on progressive reforms or essentially block all reform efforts by Merz”.
‘Part of the problem’
Merz is hoping to push through a slate of pro-business reforms and to overhaul the social welfare system in coming months, all aimed at jump-starting the economy.
That requires difficult compromises with the SPD, and some on the party’s left flank -- such as Philipp Tuermer, the head of the party’s youth wing -- have demanded a reorientation of the party.
“There must be a clear response now if we don’t want to stand idly by and watch the demise of the SPD,” Tuermer told the RND news network. “Anyone who isn’t prepared to fundamentally change something in this situation is part of the problem themselves.”
Losing the onetime SPD stronghold is a further blow for the once-proud party, whose fortunes have faded amid a string of bitter defeats, most recently this month when the SPD fell to fourth place in a regional election in Baden-Wuerttemberg with just 5.5 percent.
Nationally, the SPD hit a historic low point last year, when ex-chancellor Olaf Scholz led them to their worst result in more than a century -- 16.4 percent -- in the February 2025 election.
Klingbeil and party co-chair Baerbel Bas, who also serves as labour minister, stuck to the SPD’s reform course after party leadership talks on Monday morning.
