Merz’s party stumbles into a year of German state elections with a narrow defeat

Chancellor Merz's party faces challenges after a narrow defeat in Baden-Württemberg amid a crucial year of German state elections.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz's party has made a disappointing start to a year packed with German state elections, suffering a narrow defeat in an important industrial region after a prominent candidate powered the environmentalist Greens to a come-from-behind victory.

Mr. Merz said Monday (March 9, 2026) that his federal government, which has struggled to get Germany’s stagnant economy moving, will have to “manage more, and more substantially, in terms of the necessary reforms so that we in Germany can get out of this difficult economic situation.” The country has Europe's biggest economy.

Mr. Merz's center-right Christian Democratic Union was long confident of winning back the governor's office in Baden-Württemberg, a region of more than 11 million people in southwestern Germany that is home among many other companies to automakers Mercedes-Benz and Porsche. The country's first and so far only Green governor, Winfried Kretschmann, is retiring after 15 years in charge of a traditional conservative heartland.

A CDU victory long looked likely despite the unpopularity of the 10-month-old national government. But the party's poll lead shrank ahead of Sunday's election thanks to a Green campaign focused on Cem Özdemir, a longtime federal lawmaker and former German agriculture minister.

Final results Monday (March 9, 2026) showed the Greens taking 30.2% of the vote, just ahead of the CDU with 29.7% — a gain compared with five years ago but not enough for victory. The far-right, anti-migration Alternative for Germany nearly doubled its support to 18.8%, reflecting its gains in last year's national election. Mr. Merz's partners in the federal government, the center-left Social Democrats, lost half their support to poll an embarrassing 5.5%.

Mr. Özdemir, 60, touted his experience and leaned hard into the Greens' relatively conservative image in Baden-Württemberg — a contrast with the party's more left-wing approach nationally, where it is in opposition.