Germany is made up of 16 federal states, each with a slightly different version of proportional representation – making it a reliable source of news for us if nothing else! As per the national parliament, the Bundestag, 13 of the 16 states elect their representatives from a mix of Westminster style First Past the Post seats and lists of candidates proposed by the political parties.
A couple of weeks ago we looked at the outcome of the state election in Saxony-Anhalt. Another week, another German state election to discuss, this time in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
The 2026 election in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern covers the Baltic coast next to Poland, and has a number of similarities with the recent election in Saxony-Anhalt. Both states are in the former East Germany and saw very high turnout (78%) in comparison with average turnouts for state elections in Germany.
In both elections, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party got the highest number of votes. But, the AfD did not win a majority of votes in either election and so did not win a majority of seats in either election either, due to the proportional Additional Member System (AMS), used for most German state elections and German Federal elections.
But, if Westminster’s First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system had been used, the AfD would almost certainly have won a majority of seats and outright control of both state’s Landtags or parliaments.
First Past the Post would have handed power to the AFD
The reason we can be highly confident that the AfD would have taken full control of these states under FPTP is because AMS is a mixed system, which retains an element of FPTP. Under AMS, voters get two votes – one in a single-member First Past the Post constituency (FPTP), where the candidate with the most votes wins; the other for a party list covering a wider area.
The party list votes are used to award seats in a way that ensures that the overall election result is much more representative of how people voted than would be the case under a solely First Past The Post system, such as is used for UK general elections.
In Saxony-Anhalt, the AfD won 92.7% of the FPTP seats, from 44.3% of votes cast across the FPTP constituencies. The centre-right CDU got the second highest number of votes (24.0%) but zero seats. This is an example of one party coming twenty percentage points ahead of the next largest party and therefore being able to scoop up virtually all of the seats under FPTP, despite receiving fewer than half the votes cast.
First Past the Post would have turned a slight lead into a huge majority
The outcome in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern election, while perhaps less stark than that in Saxony-Anhalt, provides an example of another kind of outcome that can often occur under First Past the Post; where one party gets slightly more votes than another party but where FPTP gives that party an underserved boost and a majority of seats from far fewer than half of votes.
In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the AfD got slightly more FPTP votes (39.5%) than the second placed centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) (37.4%). There were 36 seats elected by FPTP in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with the AfD winning 22 of these seats (61.1%) and the SPD winning the other 14 FPTP seats (38.9%).
Noticeably, despite winning 23% of the vote between them, none of the other parties won a First Past the Post seat.
Proportional representation brings the result back to normal
However, a further 35 representatives were elected via the second, party list votes, with 15 of the seats going to the SPD; 10 to the AfD and 5 each to Die Linke or The Left Party and the Greens.
The two pie charts below show a vote share/seat share comparison for both the overall result in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern (with vote share based on party list votes) and a vote share/seat share comparison for just the FPTP seats (with vote share based on votes cast across the FPTP seats).
Both the CDU and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), a party formed from a split with Die Linke, narrowly missed out on representation in the Landtag, as they both fell just short of the 5% threshold of party list votes which are required in order to be awarded party list seats.
Elections aren’t a horse race
We will see what form the government of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern takes, but with 54.8% of seats held by left wing parties, it is unlikely that the AFD will be in power, yet alone in the position to hold power alone that First Past the Post would have placed them in.
Elections aren’t a horse race, where all that matters is who crosses the line first, they are about representing the people, so the government represent the people – or at least a majority of them. The idea that coming first is all that should matter turns elections into a game played by the political parties, not a serious effort to represent voters.