The threshold stands in front of the ballot
On Sunday 2.5 million people in Berlin and 1.3 million in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania were called to the polls. A ZDF poll put the CDU at 6 per cent, on the 5 per cent line needed to enter the state parliament; the main race is between Manuela Schwesig's Social Democratic Party (SPD) at 37 per cent and Leif-Erik Holm's AfD at 36 per cent.[1]
The 5 per cent filter is not this ballot's invention. The Federal Republic has long used that threshold to keep entry to a Landtag narrow; a small loss of votes becomes absence, not a smaller caucus. The CDU at 6 per cent is that filter doing the work it was built to do, not a centrist party suddenly turning fringe.[1]
This state, this week
Two weeks ago in Saxony-Anhalt the AfD inflicted a heavy defeat on the CDU and came just short of an absolute majority. Florian Hartleb called that 'a revolution for the German party system'. The same Landtag calendar has now locked Friedrich Merz, 16 months in office and with approval around 14 per cent, into Sunday evening; he skipped the UN General Assembly.[1]
That is not an automatic fall of the chancellor. A Land vote does not dismiss a federal government; Landtag shocks in the Merkel years were read differently in Berlin. What is new is that successive eastern ballots are measuring, one after another, the CDU's cohesion in the post-unification east, and that the AfD has named Saxony-Anhalt as a step toward the 2029 federal election. The signal to watch is whether the CDU stays above 5 per cent in Schwerin.[1]