Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: Manuela Schwesig wants to compete again

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania’s head of government Manuela Schwesig is aiming for a third term. “I like to be a prime minister, want to stay and continue our country into a good future,” said the SPD politician of the dpa news agency. Its goal is that the SPD will become the strongest force again in the state election in just over a year in order to be able to form a reliable and stable government again. September 20, 2026, the election date in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania was set.

The SPD had won the election in 2021 with the state chairman Schwesig at the top with 39.6 percent and then formed a coalition with the left. The government work has been running silently since then.

However, according to surveys, approval for the Social Democrats has almost halved. At 21 percent, the SPD was only second behind the AfD in April, which also finds more and more followers in the northeast and came to 29 percent.

Schwesig, who surprisingly replaced her predecessor Erwin Sellering (SPD), who was seriously ill in 2017, does not want to be dissuaded from her course with currently weak survey values. Even before the 2021 state election, the SPD was still far from its goal in surveys, but then increased vigorously.

With the SPD, AfD, CDU, Left, Greens and FDP, there are currently six parties to the state parliament in Schwerin. According to a survey by Insa on behalf of the Nordkurier Group, only AfD, SPD, CDU and Linke could certainly expect to be represented in the new state parliament.