Overview
- - ZDF projections late Sunday show the Greens at 30.3%, the CDU at 29.7% and AfD at 18.8%, with the SPD near 5.5% and both the FDP and Die Linke around 4.4% and likely out of the Landtag.
- - Özdemir is poised to succeed Winfried Kretschmann and, if confirmed, would become the first German state leader of Turkish origin.
- - AfD nearly doubled its 2021 result in the state and ranked second among voters aged 16 to 24, according to TV exit polls.
- - German media indicate the Greens and CDU are expected to renew their coalition to govern the state.
- - The outcome is viewed as an early setback for Friedrich Merz’s CDU nationally, with late‑campaign damage from a resurfaced video of CDU candidate Manuel Hagel and economic anxieties in the auto heartland cited alongside a Cologne court ruling limiting the “extremist” label for AfD.