The conservative and far-right gains come at the expense of Merz\u2019s federal coalition partners, the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which came second in the small state of around 4 million inhabitants bordering France, Luxembourg and Belgium. The SPD\u2019s defeat at the hands of its coalition partner could plunge it deeper into crisis nationally and destabilize the government in Berlin as the party seeks to retrench and appeal to what\u2019s left of its left-leaning base.<\/p>\n
The SPD\u2019s vote share collapsed by around 10 percentage points to 25.9 percent. Merz\u2019s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), meanwhile, came first with 31 percent of the vote, taking control of the state premiership from the SPD after 35 years in opposition.<\/p>\n
The CDU\u2019s lead candidate in Rhineland-Palatinate, Gordon Schnieder, pointed to a combative campaign. \u201cWe had that will to win, I\u2019ve felt it over the past few months,\u201d Schnieder said on ARD television.<\/p>\n
The biggest winner in terms of vote share gained is the AfD, though, which more than doubled its support to 19.5 percent compared with the last state election five years ago when it got 8.3 percent of the vote. The strong showing comes after the AfD\u2019s third-place performance in a state election in Baden-W\u00fcrttemberg earlier this month<\/a>, illustrating how the party has been able to gain ground outside its eastern strongholds<\/a>. The outcome in Rhineland-Palatinate is the AfD\u2019s best-ever result in a western German state.<\/p>\n The election in Rhineland-Palatinate was the second of five state races to be held this year in what Germans are calling a Superwahljahr \u2014 or \u201csuper election year\u201d \u2014 that is seen as a key test of the national mood as the AfD seeks to overtake Merz\u2019s conservatives in national polls<\/a>. The AfD is on track to secure big victories in two eastern states in votes set for September, according to polls.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have achieved record results,\u201d Alice Weidel, one of the AfD\u2019s national leaders, said on Sunday. \u201cVoters appreciate the work we\u2019ve done as opposition party, and we will continue on this path so that we can join the government in the next election.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The conservative and far-right gains come at the expense of Merz\u2019s federal coalition partners, the center-left Social Democratic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7095,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[124],"tags":[7046,1065,1103,233,249,2432,2435,185],"class_list":{"0":"post-7094","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-friedrich-merz","8":"tag-alice-weidel","9":"tag-elections","10":"tag-elections-in-europe","11":"tag-friedrich-merz","12":"tag-germany","13":"tag-industry","14":"tag-manufacturing","15":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/116341927177257255","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7094\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7095"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}