Overview
- Five state votes are scheduled: Baden-Württemberg on 8 March, Rhineland-Palatinate on 22 March, Saxony-Anhalt on 6 September, and both Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern on 20 September.
- Recent surveys place the AfD near 40 percent in Saxony-Anhalt, where the party is classified by the domestic intelligence agency as reliably right-wing extremist.
- CDU figures sharpen their stance against the AfD, with Sachsen-Anhalt’s Sven Schulze ruling out cabinet cooperation with both the AfD and Die Linke as campaigns intensify.
- Election researchers caution that coalition building could be unusually complex, with scenarios up to broad anti-AfD alliances, while the FDP risks falling below the 5 percent threshold in the southwest.
- The federal agenda opens the year with a 13-member pension commission, a Bund–Länder body on social administration, plans to revise heating and building rules, and renewed debate over easing the constitutional debt brake.