SPD and CDU Hold Final Rallies Ahead of Pivotal Rhineland-Palatinate State Election

Rhineland-Palatinate's state election campaign concluded Friday with rival final rallies held just 30 kilometers apart, as the SPD and CDU staged their closing events in Landau and Bad Dürkheim respectively ahead of Sunday's vote. Minister-President Alexander Schweitzer gathered SPD supporters in Landau's Altes Kaufhaus — the city where he was born — flanked by all three of the party's former state heads of government: Rudolf Scharping, Kurt Beck, and Malu Dreyer. The CDU held its final rally in the spa town of Bad Dürkheim's Salierhalle, where a brass band played an Udo Jürgens medley and Federal Chancellor Friedrich Merz appeared as the headline guest in support of CDU lead candidate Gordon Schnieder. Both candidates refrained from sharp attacks throughout the evening, a tone consistent with the broader campaign, which observers described as notably civil given the stakes involved. The restraint was widely attributed to the expectation that the two parties may soon need to govern together in Mainz regardless of who finishes first.

Thirty-five years out of power drives CDU ambitions The SPD has governed Rhineland-Palatinate without interruption since 1991, making it one of the longest-running single-party dominances at the state level in modern German politics. The CDU has been out of power in the state for 35 years. Malu Dreyer, who led the state government from January 2013 until July 2024, handed the office to Alexander Schweitzer, making Sunday's election Schweitzer's first as lead candidate. Gordon Schnieder has served as a member of the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament since 2016 and has led the CDU parliamentary group as opposition leader since April 2023. Schnieder, who hails from the Eifel region, declared at the close of the Bad Dürkheim rally that he was confident the CDU would not only be indispensable to any future coalition but that he personally would become the new Minister-President, ending his remarks with the rallying call: „"We're doing it."” — Gordon Schnieder via dpa Schweitzer, speaking in Landau, framed the election in terms of who holds real executive authority, stressing that it makes a fundamental difference whether one is holding the steering wheel or sitting in the passenger seat. He has repeatedly made clear he has no intention of serving in a CDU-led cabinet. Schnieder, born in 1975 in Trier, and Schweitzer, born in 1973 in Landau, both emphasized their rural roots throughout the campaign and maintained an informal, first-name basis with each other — an unusual dynamic between rival lead candidates that shaped the campaign's relatively low-temperature atmosphere.

Special leave controversy dogs SPD in final stretch The most contentious issue to emerge in the campaign's closing weeks centered on the granting of special leave to state officials for election campaigning, with the CDU and the Free Voters attempting to use the matter against the SPD. The specific case involved a civil servant from the Interior Ministry who had been granted leave to campaign for the SPD — a practice Schnieder said he would end as Minister-President, arguing it fuels disillusionment with politics regardless of its legal status. The Free Voters commissioned a legal opinion on special leave for state secretaries and referred the matter to the public prosecutor's office, which found no grounds for an investigation. The state government, for its part, said its own legal position was confirmed by a separate opinion from constitutional law expert and former Federal Constitutional Court judge Udo Di Fabio. Political scientist Claudia Ritzi of the University of Trier assessed the CDU's late push on the issue critically. „"The CDU is trying to damage the SPD at the last minute."” — Claudia Ritzi via dpa Ritzi added that given the expected neck-and-neck race between the two parties, she saw a real risk that the AfD would ultimately benefit more from the controversy than the CDU itself.

AfD poised for major gains as polls show tight race Ritzi warned that the AfD could more than double its result from the previous state election, when the party received 8.3 (percent) — AfD result in Rhineland-Palatinate 2021 state election. The CDU also launched a late campaign warning against a Red-Red-Green coalition involving the Left Party, though Ritzi and the sources noted this scenario was considered highly unlikely — the Left Party has never entered the Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament, and even a first-time entry after Sunday's vote remained far from certain. Schweitzer had placed the poor financial situation of the state's municipalities at the center of his agenda from the very day he took office in July 2024, a theme he pursued more forcefully than his predecessor Dreyer. Education policy was the other major substantive issue running through the campaign alongside the special leave controversy. With both lead candidates projecting confidence about finishing first, the outcome of Sunday's vote will determine not only who leads the next state government but also whether the SPD's 35-year hold on Rhineland-Palatinate survives its first direct electoral test under new leadership.