Power Shift in Rhineland-Palatinate: CDU Triumphs, SPD Suffers Historic Loss
Mainz, March 23 – The Ampel coalition has been voted out, and the CDU in Rhineland-Palatinate has a prospect of power again after 35 years in opposition. The state parliament in Mainz will undergo significant changes. Following the power shift in Rhineland-Palatinate, parties are today discussing and analyzing the results of the state election. For the SPD, led by Minister-President and top candidate Alexander Schweitzer, the election outcome was an extremely painful defeat. The Social Democrats have governed the state for 35 years and had never performed so poorly in a state election. In the future, they will likely play a junior role in the state government.
The CDU, with its top candidate Gordon Schnieder, triumphed. The Christian Democrats can, after more than three decades, in all likelihood give up their opposition role and are seeking an alliance under their leadership with the Social Democrats. “We will form a coalition in the democratic center. I have never worked with right-wing extremists and will not do so,” Schnieder made clear on election night that he sees no basis for talks or even an alliance with the AfD, which more than doubled its result.
Federal Parties Discuss in Berlin
The election result in Rhineland-Palatinate is also a severe blow for the federal SPD. Already in the evening, the Social Democrats around Schweitzer had partly blamed their party’s federal trend for the election defeat. The SPD presidium is analyzing the election result in Berlin (9:00 a.m.), and Schweitzer, who took a long time to appear before his supporters in the evening, is also expected. Schweitzer rules out becoming a minister in a future state government led by the CDU.
“We must also discuss very clearly in the committees in the coming days whether the path we, Lars Klingbeil and I, have taken is the right one and whether we will continue it,” said co-chair Bärbel Bas on election night. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius rejected calls for a complete change of the SPD party leadership. There is no need for a personnel discussion in the party or the coalition now. “That would be irresponsible, and I am not available for that.”
Analysis Also Sees Reasons in Rhineland-Palatinate
An analysis by the Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, however, also identified reasons for the SPD’s decline in Rhineland-Palatinate. “The SPD’s slump is due to a weak government record, diminished party reputation, and policy deficits,” their analysis of the result states.
The CDU, with its top candidate Schnieder, can discuss the election result much more calmly. The federal leadership of the party around Friedrich Merz should also be relieved – unlike in Baden-Württemberg, the party managed to bring the lead determined in surveys to the finish line. The presidium and federal executive board of the party are also meeting in Berlin (from 9:00 a.m.).
CDU Clearly Ahead of SPD
The CDU became the clear strongest force in the state election in Rhineland-Palatinate on Sunday, and the neck-and-neck race between the two parties, expected by many, did not materialize. According to the preliminary result of the state election commissioner, the CDU received 31.0 percent (plus 3.3 points).
The SPD lost almost ten percentage points compared to the previous election in 2021 and plummeted to 25.9 percent of the votes. They had never performed so poorly in a state election in Rhineland-Palatinate. Schweitzer ran as the top candidate for the SPD for the first time; he had taken over the office of Minister-President from Malu Dreyer in the summer of 2024.
AfD: The Election Winner
The AfD achieved the highest gains of all parties. It more than doubled its result (2021: 8.3 percent) and reached 19.5 percent, its best result to date in a western German state. “We will now be a strong opposition. We have 24 deputies, can bring significantly more horsepower to the road. And we have the opportunity to set up committees of inquiry, for example, to review the state government’s Corona policy. And we will certainly do that,” said AfD parliamentary group leader and top candidate Jan Bollinger.
The Greens, who were previously part of the Ampel government in Mainz, received 7.9 percent of the votes; in the previous election, it was 9.3 percent. The state parliament in Mainz will in the future be a four-party parliament, as both the FDP (2.1 percent) and the Freie Wähler (4.2 percent) clearly missed re-entry. The Left Party also failed to clear the five-percent hurdle with 4.4 percent and will continue not to be represented in the state parliament.
105 Seats in the State Parliament
The CDU will have 39 (plus 8), the SPD 32 deputies (minus 7). The AfD will have 24 seats (plus 15), the Greens 10 (unchanged). Because the CDU won more direct mandates than it would be entitled to according to the result of the state votes, there will be two overhang and two compensatory mandates in the new state parliament. This increases the number of originally planned deputies from 101 to 105.
For ten years, a coalition of SPD, Greens, and FDP has governed the state with its good four million inhabitants. Now everything points to a grand coalition under Schnieder: other alliances are either numerically or – in the case of the AfD – politically impossible. The CDU and SPD together would achieve a broad majority of 71 of the 105 mandates.
Almost three million people in Rhineland-Palatinate were called to vote. Voter turnout, according to the state election commissioner, was 68.5 percent, higher than in the 2021 election (64.3 percent), which was marked by the Corona pandemic.
