After two torturous months of campaigning, the wait is over. Friedrich Merz, leader of the conservative CDU party, is on track to win Germany’s federal election. According to the official exit poll, published at 5pm UK time, his party has won 28.9 per cent of the vote. This means they are set to become the largest party in Berlin’s new parliament.
Hot on the heels of the CDU is the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, which has achieved 19.7 per cent of the vote. While it is its highest ever result in a federal election, their projected vote share suggests the far-right party will be just shy of the 20 per cent mark – several percentage points lower than polls had predicted for much of the campaign. Still, with the party nearly doubling their vote share from the past election in 2021, co-leader of the party Alice Weidel was in a jubilant mood, declaring that the AfD was now ‘firmly anchored’ in the German mainstream.
Now, for Merz, the hard work begins on attempting to form a coalition government
Merz’s victory spells defeat for the incumbent chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose social democrat SPD party has come in third, achieving just 16.1 per cent of the vote. The official results from today’s vote will trickle in over the course of the evening, so it will only become apparent in the coming hours whether the SPD’s projected result will translate into its worst election performance in nearly 100 years. Nevertheless, there is a small mercy for the SPD in the result: after competing with the Green party for third place in the election, the party will be breathing a small sigh of relief that they have finished a comfortable 3 percentage points or so ahead of them.
Of the smallest three parties vying to make it over the 5 per cent threshold into the Bundestag tonight, only the left-wing Linke party has triumphed. After experiencing a late bounce in the polls over the past few weeks, the Linke has managed to win approximately 8.6 per cent of the vote. Despite, for the majority of the campaign, it seeming like their closest opponent, the far-left Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), was set to steal voters away from the Linke, support for the BSW appears to have collapsed, with both them and the liberal FDP party falling short with just under 5 per cent each.
For Germans, the importance of this election campaign – with an insurgent far-right and divisive issues such as immigration top of the agenda – has not gone unappreciated. According to pollsters, voter turnout today is at approximately 84 per cent – the highest of any German election since reunification in 1990.
With just shy of a combined 50 per cent of the vote, the successes of the CDU and AfD mark a turning point for Germany, away from the social democratic left-wing politics that have defined the country’s last three years and firmly towards the right. Germans have, on the other hand made their dissatisfaction with Scholz’s traffic light coalition (made up of the SPD, FDP and Green parties) crystal clear: three years of infighting and governmental paralysis has scuppered the parties’ successes at the ballot box today.
The issue of migration has overwhelmingly been the biggest priority for voters in this election. Three fatal mass attacks committed by foreign-born perpetrators – two of whom had failed asylum claims – in the cities of Munich, Aschaffenburg and Magdeburg – amplified the role migration interlinked with domestic security played in the national debate.
Other key issues such as how politicians plan to revive Germany’s stagnant economy and wilting industry fell by the wayside during the campaign. Meanwhile, the question of Ukraine fell under the spotlight at the last minute thanks to the aggressive overtures of US President Donald Trump and his moves to sideline Europe from discussions with Russia over the future of the war in Ukraine.
Now, for Merz, the hard work begins on attempting to form a coalition government. With the CDU leader insisting he wouldn’t jeopardise the ‘Brandmauer’ around the AfD – the firewall agreement between the establishment parties not to collaborate with the far-right party in government – the exit poll suggests Merz has just one viable option: to partner with the SPD. This would give the so-called grand coalition – or ‘GroKo’ – a projected 327 seats, just 11 above the 316 needed for a majority. Nevertheless, should the BSW or FDP indeed sneak into the Bundestag as official results are locked in over the coming hours, this may force Merz to take on a second coalition partner to create a less stable three-way formation.
During the campaign, Merz made a number of day one promises, pledging to close down Germany’s borders to illegal migration and promising to review the country’s nuclear energy strategy. He has also promised to travel to Paris and Warsaw to reset relations with France and Poland, both of which have suffered somewhat under Scholz’s administration, and to take a lead role in European response to Trump’s threats to withdraw American security guarantees from the continent. It remains to be seen whether any of these pledges get watered down once Merz starts hammering out a coalition agreement with whichever party he approaches.
Merz’s coalition negotiations are expected to take a number of weeks, before his nomination for chancellor is put to a vote in the Bundestag around Easter. In the meantime, Scholz and his minority government – consisting of just the SPD and Greens after the FDP triggered the government’s collapse by walking out in November – will continue in office until the vote takes place. For Merz, then, there is a long way to go before he can claim the keys to the chancellery and get to work.
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