The state parliament will be elected in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on September 20, 2026. The Wahl-O-Mat shows you which party best represents your interests. What other voting tools are there?
Schwerin. A new state parliament will be elected in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on September 20th. The election campaign focuses on key issues such as the economy, reducing bureaucracy, internal security, health and education as well as migration and asylum.
If you want to know which party in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania best represents your own position, the Wahl-O-Mat will help. You can use the question and answer tool to compare your stance with the positions of the parties running in the election.
Here you will find the most important information about the state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the Wahl-O-Mat and other digital voting aids.
You can find the Wahl-O-Mat for the election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania here:
First, evaluate statements on state political issues by clicking on “agree”, “disagree”, “neutral” or “skip thesis”. You can give additional weight to statements that are particularly important to you.
The Wahl-O-Mat then calculates which party in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is closest to your positions. You can also compare your answers in detail with those of the parties. The Wahl-O-Mat only serves as an aid, but not as a voting recommendation.
An independent team develops the theses of the Wahl-O-Mate and selects them. It consists of young voters from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, experts from science, journalism and education as well as employees of the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb).
The team presents 80 theses to the parties admitted to the state elections with a request for answers. It then selects 38 theses for the Wahl-O-Mat, which address important topics of the election and which were controversially answered by the parties.
The parties are not involved in the creation or selection of the theses. They simply formulate their answers and reasons and release them. All parties admitted to the state elections are invited to take part.
The Wahl-O-Mat is offered by the Federal Agency for Civic Education. It is an authority of the Federal Ministry of the Interior and, according to its own statements, pursues the goal of “promoting democratic awareness among the population and motivating and enabling people in the Federal Republic of Germany to participate maturely, critically and actively in political life”.
The legal basis for the work of the bpb is a decree of the Federal Ministry of the Interior dated January 24, 2001. The Federal Agency for Civic Education has existed since 1952.
A politically balanced attitude in the work of the bpb is controlled by a board of trustees made up of 22 members of the German Bundestag. In addition, a scientific advisory board made up of up to twelve experts supports the bpb in fundamental matters.
The Wahl-O-Mat has been around since 2002. The online tool is published with current information before state and federal elections as well as before the European Parliament elections.
The election will take place in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania on Sunday, September 20th. The polling stations are then open between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Anyone who cannot vote at a polling station has the option of voting by post. The Wahl-O-Mat for the state parliament election went online on August 24th at 1:30 p.m.
The Wahl-O-Mat is not the only guide for all undecided people. With the online voting aid Party-Check, which was developed for the 2024 European elections and further developed for the 2025 federal election, interested parties can use 15 to 20 questions to calculate how closely they agree with the parties' content.
The Party Check is a scientific party test that complements the Wahl-O-Mat - it is based on the neutral analysis of independent political experts.
With WahlSwiper, interested parties can answer questions by swiping left (“No”) or right (“Yes”). The tool then determines how closely their positions correspond to those of the parties. According to the operators, 17 parties have submitted their answers for the state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.
19 parties are running in the state elections on September 20th. The decision about which parties will be on the ballot paper was made on July 30th at the meeting of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania State Election Committee.
In addition to the factions already represented and the FDP group, according to the state returning officer, the state lists of the following parties were approved: Communist Party of Germany (KPD), Party of Progress (PdF), WE LIVE DEMOCRACY (WLD), PARTEI HUMAN CLIMATE ANIMAL PROTECTION (Animal Protection Party), Pirate Party, Craftsmen Party, Volt, Team Freedom, Alliance C - Christians for Germany, Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht - Reason and Justice (BSW), Free Voters, The party and Ecological Democratic Party (ÖDP).
After the election, the newly elected state parliament meets for its constituent session. It is the ninth state parliament in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. A new state parliament is elected every five years; The election date for 2026 was decided by the state government at the end of July 2025. According to the state returning officer, the state's electoral area is divided into 36 constituencies.
In the current electoral period, 79 members are represented in the state parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in Schwerin. 75 of them belong to five factions or groups, four are non-affiliated: the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) 34, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) 13, the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) twelve, the Left nine, Alliance 90/The Greens four and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) three.
The AfD initially won 14 seats in the 2021 election, but one MP left the party. For the Greens, the number of mandates fell from five to four due to the resignation of one MP. Two MPs resigned from the FDP. The remaining members of the former FDP parliamentary group were given group status.
The SPD is going into the election campaign with the incumbent Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Manuela Schwesig has led the state since 2017 and is chairwoman of the party in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. She has held several positions at the state and federal levels. She sat in the state parliament from 2011 to 2014 and has been a member again since 2021. Between 2008 and 2013 she was Minister for Social Affairs of the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and then Federal Minister for Family Affairs until 2017.
Against the background of speculation about a possible change to the top of the federal SPD, Schwesig emphasized in mid-August that he wanted to stay in Schwerin. She has clearly decided in favor of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and wants to remain Prime Minister for the next five years, she said at a citizens' dialogue.
The AfD is relying on a double strategy: The co-state chairman and member of the Bundestag Leif-Erik Holm has been nominated as a candidate for the office of Prime Minister. According to NDR, Holm is hoping to win a direct mandate in the Schwerin constituency in competition with Manuela Schwesig. Group leader and co-chairman Enrico Schult is slated to be the top candidate for first place on the state list.
The Christian Democrats are running with Daniel Peters as their top candidate. The political scientist and former research assistant to the Bundestag member Eckhardt Rehberg was elected as the top candidate in January 2026 with around 97 percent of the vote. Since 2024 he has been state chairman of the CDU in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and chairman of the state parliamentary group.
The Left puts Simone Oldenburg in first place on the state list. Oldenburg is Deputy Prime Minister and State Minister for Education and Child Care. From 2016 to 2021 she was chairwoman of the state parliamentary group of the Left.
The Greens are running with Bundestag member Claudia Müller as their top candidate. Originally, parliamentary group leader Constanze Oehlrich was intended to be the top candidate. Oehlrich resigned as parliamentary group leader in August after allegations of harassment were made against her by an employee. She denied the allegations. Müller had already been elected as the top candidate at a special party conference in January.
The FDP has chosen the lawyer and professor of constitutional, European and administrative law, Jakob Schirmer, as its top candidate. The alternative practitioner and osteopath Peter Schabbel is running as the top candidate for the BSW in the state elections.
According to the State Office for Internal Administration, all German citizens who are at least 16 years old on election day and who have had their main residence in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania for at least 37 days or who otherwise usually reside there without having an apartment are eligible to vote.
But there is also the possibility of being excluded from the right to vote: judges make the decision. 1,312,471 people were eligible to vote in the 2021 state election.
With postal voting you can vote before the election date. You can collect the postal voting documents from the city or municipal administration or apply for them in writing. It is also possible to apply electronically if the city or municipality offers such a procedure, for example via online application or email. According to the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania service portal, when submitting a written application you should use the form that was sent with the election notification.
