Berlin Briefing 104 Final - MP3-Stereo

I think the key message is that the CDU, so the Christian Democrats, the party of the German chancellor, they lost big time, especially in up north in Meck-Pom, in Mecklenburg, uh, Western Pomerania, where they're below 5%.

The, that's the threshold in, in Germany.

If you don't have 5%, you just don't get into parliament.

Even if you have 4.9%, you don't get one single seat, so that was dramatic.

First time that ever happened.

And in Berlin also, they lost big time, I think about 10 percentage points down to 18%.

So that, that's kind of what generated the biggest story in the last days because it, you know, what does it mean for the chancellor? And the other stats are look at the far right, look at the far left.

The AFD did very well in Berlin and did, uh, extremely well in, in Mecklenburg, where they had, uh, 38.2% of the vote.

Berlin traditionally not a stronghold for the AFD, but still above 16%.

And then of course, the far left, uh, Die Linke, which also means, um, The Left, so that's why we say Die Linke, because otherwise it would be the Far Left Left, and we want to avoid that, but we- we're still discussing this.

Anyway, and so they're the strongest in Berlin with, uh, 25.7%.

And when you say Berlin, maybe just to give people out there an idea, we're talking about the state of Berlin.

So Germany has 16 regions, right? And Berlin is one of them, which I, I always myself, I pin- I find it personally confusing that we're talking about the conservative Social Democrats coalition in Berlin and then these days could mean both, right? Could mean federal level or state level.

Yeah, we're gonna-

But here today-

We're gonna have to be clear.

Yeah.

[laughs]

Exactly.

We have to be very, very disciplined.

So Michaela, we started this episode with the sound bite by Friedrich Merz calling the results of the Mecklenburg-West Pomerania elections a disaster.

Why did we do that? What was so significant? And perhaps most importantly, when did he make this statement?

It was just after the polls closed, just after 6:00.

In fact, it was announced for 5 minutes past 6:00, and then it was delayed by yet more and more minutes because the, initially the exit polls were so unclear.

And so he called this a disaster even before he knew that his party, for the first time in its history, would no longer make it into the regional parliament in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania.