The AfD took about 38.2 per cent in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern against 35.5 for the SPD, its second state win in two weeks; Friedrich Merz's CDU fell to 4.9 per cent, below the 5 per cent threshold (election commission, preliminary result, 20 September 2026).
Hunch. A five-point lead sits near the low end of the record, and a popular SPD premier who 59% prefer is the same kind of incumbent who overturned a small AfD lead in Brandenburg in 2024.
The Mecklenburg-Vorpommern first-place market resolves on the provisional result that the state returning officer (Landeswahlleiter) publishes on laiv-mv.de on the night of 20 September 2026: YES if the AfD has the highest share of second votes (Zweitstimmen), NO otherwise, and a tie resolves NO. If the site cannot be reached, the result as reported by two of Reuters, the Guardian and BBC News settles it.
We found seven state votes since 2023 with a clear poll lead. In each one a party went into the vote 3 points or more ahead in the last Infratest dimap poll, and we checked whether it won the most second votes, the party-list votes. Each case is a different state. The closest leads were Bremen in 2023, at 3 points, and Berlin in 2023, at 6. Berlin's own question sits on the other side of that line. In the four state votes since 2023 where the final lead was under 3 points, the poll leader came first twice.