Gordon Schnieder, the CDU’s lead candidate in Rhineland-Palatinate, made headlines earlier this month with a blunt statement on knife crime during a televised debate with incumbent SPD Minister-President Alexander Schweitzer. During the debate, he stated that knife crime is not German crime but immigration crime. Just days later, he went on to win the state election on March 22, ending 35 years of Social Democrat (SPD) rule in the state.
“This is not German criminality, this is immigrant criminality,” Schnieder had declared during the SWR debate, placing migration squarely at the center of the security debate in the campaign’s final stretch.
Although not the only reason Schnieder came out on top, the debate showed that he was more than willing to make a statement that would have led an Alternative for Germany (AfD) candidate to be accused of racism.
In the end, the CDU took 31 percent of the vote to the SPD’s 25.9 percent, and Schnieder is now set to become Minister-President — the first CDU leader to hold the position since 1991.
Knife crime debate
Schneider’s remark was made specifically in the context of knife violence, which has surged across Germany in recent years. In Rhineland-Palatinate alone, authorities registered 561 knife offenses in 2025 — roughly 1.5 cases per day. Nationally, the figure is far more alarming: Approximately 80 knife attacks or knife-related crimes occur every single day, totaling nearly 30,000 incidents per year.
Schnieder subsequently stood by his statement, offering a telling piece of context: Knife crime was only added as a separate category in German police crime statistics in 2020. His explanation was pointed, saying it was “because it simply wasn’t typical German crime in the years before either.”
The implication is that the phenomenon is directly linked to the migration wave that began in 2015, and that the statistical infrastructure was only created once the problem became impossible to ignore.
The deputy federal chairman of the German Police Union, Manuel Ostermann, has been similarly direct in 2024 about the issue.
“The migration crisis is also a crime crisis,” he said, adding that men from the main countries of origin for asylum seekers are disproportionately represented in relevant crime statistics.
🇩🇪‼️ "Germany is no longer a safe country… The migration crisis is first and foremost a crime crisis."
German police union (DPoIG) chairman Manuel Ostermann makes a major statement following the Solingen terror attack by a Syrian Islamist. pic.twitter.com/ZolmrLnMHa
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) August 28, 2024Ostermann called for consistent deportations with re-entry bans for serious offenders.
Misleading voters?
The win in Rhineland-Palatinate marks a significant moment for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU, coming just two weeks after the party narrowly lost to the Greens in Baden-Württemberg. CDU General Secretary Carsten Linnemann was quick to celebrate: “A really strong campaign, a strong result, and after 35 years, the CDU is now entering government.”
His daughter was murdered by an illegal Palestinian migrant, stabbed 38 times, along with her boyfriend.
17-year-old Ann-Marie is gone, but her father won't let her memory die. He delivered a message to Olaf Scholz's face:
"There are parents standing at the grave or coffin of… pic.twitter.com/JDslDGKFA4
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) October 16, 2024However, Schnieder’s willingness to adopt what critics have called “AfD-style rhetoric” on immigration and crime reflects a well-established pattern within the CDU. With the AfD continuing to grow in the polls — now running neck-and-neck with the CDU nationally at around 25 percent — the mainstream conservative party faces constant pressure to address voter concerns on migration and security in explicit terms.
Yet Schnieder, like CDU leaders before him, drew a firm line before the election: He would not form a coalition with the AfD under any circumstances.
“It would spell the downfall of this country if we were to bring the AfD on board here,” he said. The CDU and SPD are now expected to form a grand coalition at the state level, mirroring the arrangement in Berlin at the federal level.
This dynamic — speaking bluntly about migration-linked crime during campaigns, then governing in coalition with the SPD rather than acting on the hardest-line positions — has become a recurring source of frustration for voters who want more than rhetoric. Critics argue the CDU’s firewall against the AfD structurally prevents the party from implementing the toughest measures its own electorate demands, and that Schnieder’s “immigrant criminality” framing, however striking, may follow the same trajectory once coalition negotiations begin.
As a result, Schnieder’s campaign language will likely not translate into concrete policy during his coming tenure as minister-president. Regardless, elderly German voters will likely continue supporting the CDU at any cost, as they have convinced themselves that the AfD simply cannot be voted for. The divide between elderly and young voters is growing sharper and sharper, with the youth choosing AfD and the Left Party, while the elderly voters are overwhelmingly sticking with the establishment parties of the CDU and SPD.
🇩🇪 Germany's young voters are flocking to the AfD.
Rhineland-Palatinate couldn't be further away from the party's typical stomping ground in eastern German states, yet in this weekend's election, it doubled its vote share to record its best-ever result in the state.… pic.twitter.com/yxRseSY5Rd
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) March 23, 2026
