Germany’s southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg beats Sweden on population and the UK on gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. But existential anxiety is stalking this engineering hub – home to Mercedes-Benz, Porsche and Bosch – ahead of a state election on Sunday with consequences for Friedrich Merz as chancellor in Berlin.
Some 7.7 million voters will either extend the Green Party’s unprecedented 15-year run controlling the state government in Stuttgart – or back instead a young, untested ally of Friedrich Merz from the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
After months ahead in polls, local 37-year-old CDU leader Manuel Hagel has watched his lead evaporate. Now the CDU is neck-and-neck with Cem Özdemir, a 59-year-old former federal minister and Green Party leader in Berlin.
Özdemir’s election slogan was “economy, economy, economy”, portraying his state’s fate as a precursor to the wider German picture. CDU frontman Hagel meanwhile has promised drastic reforms to stop the region around Stuttgart becoming “the Detroit of Europe”.
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One likely outcome on Sunday would see the Greens remain on as coalition senior partner; in another, the Green would swap with the CDU, their junior partner for the last 15 years.
Two wild cards could yet scramble the final result: one in five voters remain undecided while almost as many voters (18 per cent) back the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party often underrepresented in pre-election surveys.
The AfD has surged by tapping into fears – and resentment – that Baden-Würtemberg’s postwar transformation from poorhouse to prosperous powerhouse is no longer a given. Local companies contribute 16 per cent of German total exports, but yet years of flat growth have seen the state economy shrink faster than elsewhere.
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Baden-Württemberg’s car companies and suppliers find themselves at the sharp end of intense pressure from China’s automotive industry, both on design and manufacturing costs. Compounding that gloom are US tariffs that have hit hard Baden-Württemberg’s luxury car segment.
The number of state insolvencies has risen for three years in succession as firms struggle to contain costs or find a new generation to take over management.“ 2026 has to be the year of reforms, German industry expect considerably more courage for change,” said Germany’s leading business lobby groups – BDI, BDA and DIHK – in an alarmed joint report before the Baden-Württemberg election.
After years of economic stagnation, Hagel has promised voters in Baden-Würtemberg he will cut energy costs and slash bureaucracy to restore the state’s economic foundation.
“This Green culture war against the car has to end, for us the most important thing is that a car is built in Baden-Württemberg,” he said at a party rally on Thursday. Just 25 per cent of voters would, if they could, vote directly for Hagel. A former local savings bank manager, he insists he has a decade’s experience as “part of a successful coalition here in Stuttgart”.
Özdemir, Germany’s last federal agriculture minister, is far more popular: 47 per cent – would choose him as minister president if it were a direct election.
“People want to know who brings experience to the table,” said Özdemir, treading a fine line in the campaign on the hot-button immigration issue. As the AfD push the idea of “remigration” – deporting foreign nationals and even non-ethnic Germans, Özdemir told an election gathering on Thursday: “We will keep the tradespeople and get rid of the criminals.”
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