Germany's SPD Faces Existential Test as Five State Elections Loom in 2026

In the conference rooms of the Willy Brandt Haus, the Social Democratic Party of Germany's Berlin headquarters named after its most celebrated postwar leader, strategists are staring at polling numbers that read like an obituary. The SPD — founded in 1863 as a champion of factory workers and the country's oldest political party — is heading into a year of five state elections with numbers that would have been unthinkable a generation ago .

According to a Forsa survey from November 2025, just 9 percent of Germany's blue-collar workers and unemployed said they would vote for the party that was built to represent them . The working class has moved on. An infratest-dimap poll conducted after the February 2025 federal election found that 38 percent of working-class voters had cast their ballots for the Alternative for Germany, a party that did not exist before 2013 . Manfred Güllner, head of the Forsa polling institute, spoke openly of an "existential threat" to the SPD after it scraped together roughly 16 percent in that election .

The immediate battleground is clear. On 8 March, voters in Baden-Württemberg go to the polls. Two weeks later, on 22 March, Rhineland-Palatinate follows . Three more state elections are scheduled later in the year. In Baden-Württemberg, the SPD is polling between 10 and 12.5 percent under lead candidate Andreas Stoch, a former education minister who has struggled to cut through in a race dominated by the Greens and CDU . The party finished at 11 percent in the 2021 state election there, and the trajectory points further downward.

But the real heartbreak for Social Democrats may come in Rhineland-Palatinate. The SPD has governed the western state continuously since 1991 — a 35-year run that spans the tenures of Rudolf Scharping, Kurt Beck, Malu Dreyer, and now Alexander Schweitzer, who took over as minister-president in 2024 after Dreyer's resignation . Dreyer pulled off improbable late-surge victories in 2016 and 2021, defying polls that had written the party off. Whether Schweitzer, a less well-known figure nationally, can repeat that trick is the question hanging over Mainz.

The CDU, led in Rhineland-Palatinate by Gordon Schnieder, sees an opportunity to reclaim a state it last governed in 1991 . Nationally, the CDU/CSU under Chancellor Friedrich Merz has shifted rightward on economic policy, planning sweeping reforms to the welfare state, pensions, healthcare and elder care against a backdrop of empty state coffers and persistent economic stagnation . This sharper conservative profile makes it harder for the SPD to differentiate itself as a junior coalition partner at the federal level — a problem the party has faced repeatedly during the Merkel years and appears unable to escape.

The roots of the SPD's predicament run deep. When Gerhard Schröder won the chancellorship in 1998 with nearly 41 percent of the vote, the party seemed to have found a formula for bridging left and center . But Schröder's Agenda 2010 reforms — which cut social benefits, relaxed employment protections, and expanded the low-wage sector — delivered an economic boost that the CDU/CSU applauded while tearing the SPD apart internally . The left wing rebelled. Disillusioned members and voters drifted to the newly formed Left Party (Die Linke), created in 2007 through a merger of the PDS, successor to East Germany's ruling communist party, and the WASG, a breakaway group of western SPD dissidents .

Angela Merkel compounded the damage. As CDU leader and then chancellor from 2005 to 2021, she systematically moved her party leftward on social issues, a strategy her conservative critics dubbed "the social democratization of the CDU" . For voters, the policy differences between the two Volksparteien became increasingly difficult to discern, especially during the years of grand coalition government that stretched across most of the 2005-2021 period. The SPD hemorrhaged support in all directions — to the Greens on environmental and social-liberal issues, to Die Linke on welfare, and to the CDU on pragmatic governance.

Olaf Scholz's brief chancellorship from 2021 to 2025 provided no lasting recovery. His three-way coalition with the Greens and Free Democrats was paralyzed by infighting between coalition partners with fundamentally incompatible economic visions . The government collapsed prematurely after three years, and the SPD limped into the 2025 election at 16 percent — roughly where it had been polling before Scholz's unexpected 2021 victory, which owed more to CDU campaign blunders than to any genuine SPD revival.

Now, as junior partner in Merz's CDU/CSU-led coalition, the party faces what political scientists call the "coalition trap": unable to claim credit for popular policies, blamed for unpopular compromises, and slowly losing its identity . The SPD leadership has begun drafting a new policy platform for 2027 that emphasizes left-wing social policies and greater equality. But critics across the political spectrum question whether such demands can be credibly advanced while sharing power with a CDU that is actively cutting social spending.

Conservative commentators argue the SPD's decline is structural and largely self-inflicted. The party abandoned its working-class base in pursuit of an urban, university-educated electorate that was already being courted by the Greens . Its embrace of liberal immigration policies, climate regulation, and identity politics alienated the very voters who once formed its bedrock — a pattern mirrored by center-left parties across Western Europe, from Labour in Britain to the Parti Socialiste in France.

Defenders of the SPD point to its resilience. The party has been written off before — it polled at just 16 percent before the 2021 election and still emerged as the strongest party . In Rhineland-Palatinate, the SPD has a history of late surges driven by popular incumbents and strong local brands. Schweitzer, while less charismatic than Dreyer, has the advantage of incumbency and a functioning state government that can point to tangible achievements.

The federal government, meanwhile, is walking on eggshells. Both the CDU and SPD are avoiding open disputes ahead of the March elections, but this caution has produced domestic policy paralysis . Political observers expect the results in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate to force a reckoning. If the SPD loses power in Mainz — ending more than three decades of continuous governance — pressure will mount within the party to distance itself from Merz's CDU at the national level, potentially destabilizing the coalition.

The stakes extend beyond one party's fortunes. Germany's postwar political architecture was built on two dominant Volksparteien — the CDU/CSU and the SPD — that together could reliably command 70 to 80 percent of the vote. Today, they struggle to reach 40 percent combined. The fragmentation of the party landscape, with the Greens, AfD, Die Linke, the BSW (Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht), and even the Free Voters all carving out significant niches, has made coalition-building increasingly complex and governance increasingly difficult.

For the SPD, the 2026 state elections are not merely a test of electoral viability. They are a referendum on whether a 163-year-old party, born in the industrial struggles of the 19th century, can find a purpose in a political landscape that has moved on without it.