North Rhine-Westphalia before the Local Elections: Germany’s “Swing State” as a Political Barometer

On 14 September 2025, North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) will elect new local councils, mayors and district administrators. With almost 18 million inhabitants, NRW is Germany’s most populous state, an economic heavyweight – and politically, it has long been regarded as the country’s “swing state”. No other German state has seen such frequent changes of government since 1946: from SPD one-party rule to CDU/FDP coalitions, from SPD-Green to today’s CDU-Green coalition. This volatility reflects weak long-term voter loyalties. Traditional milieus that once guaranteed stable majorities – the industrial working class in the Ruhr for the SPD or Catholic strongholds in Westfalen for the CDU – have lost their binding power. Parties today must reposition themselves within a fragmented and volatile electorate.

NRW is a land of contrasts: Catholic towns in Westphalia with long CDU traditions, bustling Rhine metropolises like Cologne and Düsseldorf, and the hard-working communities of the Ruhr who feel left behind after coal and steel. Between luxury shopping on Düsseldorf’s Königsallee and the blast furnaces of Duisburg, one sees both prosperity and desparation – and the very mix that makes voter behaviour here so unpredictable.

Currently, NRW is governed by a CDU-Green coalition under Minister-President Hendrik Wüst (CDU), which seeks to combine a fundamental transformation of the region’s industry with ambitious climate policy. Yet local elections follow their own logic, often giving smaller parties an outsized role and putting major paraties under pressure. According to a recent poll, the CDU stands at 35 percent, the SPD at 18 percent, the Greens at 13 percent. But what really catches the eye is the enormous rise in polls of the far-right AfD, which is currently at 16 percent and has consolidated double-digit results in parts of the Ruhr.

In Duisburg or Gelsenkirchen – cities with unemployment rates well above the state average and thousands of industrial jobs at risk – the party has gained substantial ground. If the AfD manages to anchor itself in Western Germany, this would mark a structural shift in the political landscape and make future coalition-building in NRW permanently more complex. The Ruhr region illustrates why NRW is so politically significant. Here the transformation from coal and steel to a climate-neutral economy is most tangible. Whether this change is perceived as a story of progress or of decline will shape political behaviour for years to come. Local politics thus becomes the stage where national and European challenges take concrete form: infrastructure, energy supply, integration, mobility.

The implications extend well beyond NRW. The state generates around one fifth of Germany’s GDP and plays a key role in energy and industrial policy. It is central to the country’s efforts in hydrogen, circular economy, and digitalisation, closely interconnected with European markets, especially in the neighbouring countries close by, France, Belgium and the Netherlands. If NRW succeeds in balancing industrial transformation with social stability, it will strengthen Europe’s global competitiveness. If it fails, the risk is not only a political shift to the right in Germany but also a weakening of the EU’s ambition to lead the global industrial decarbonisation process.