Conservatives win in Germany with the far right as second largest force

BerlinGermany is heading for a rightward shift with the electoral victory of Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic alliance CDU-CSU and the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. Following the failure of the three-party coalition of Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz, according to projections by ARD television. No party would have enough support to govern alone, so the CDU-CSU, the party with the most votes, would have to look for one or more coalition partners in order to achieve a majority in the Bundestag.

Merz, Chancellor in pectore, should decide whether to form a grand coalition with the Social Democrats or ally with the Greens to govern Germany for the next four years. The conservative leader already ruled out during the election campaign any alliance with the far right to form a government.

The CDU-CSU – the conservative party of Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel – would obtain 29% of the votes (almost five points more than in 2021), while the far right would double and would be the second most voted party with 19.5% of support.

"We have won the elections," Merz celebrated in his first speech at the electoral headquarters of the conservatives. He admitted that his work ahead "will not be easy", but assured that he will make every effort to make the talks to form a government as short as possible. After the 2021 elections, 73 days elapsed until the new government took office. "We want to have a government as quickly as possible, with a solid parliamentary majority," she said. She referred to the complicated global context: "The world will not wait for us, it will not wait for long coalition talks; we must do it quickly so that we can do what is needed at home and be strong and present in Europe and so that the world sees that Germany has a government that can be trusted."

AfD leader Alice Weidel was the first to celebrate the preliminary results. She appeared immediately after the first projections were made public, and stressed that the party had doubled its results compared to the previous elections. And, despite the fact that the other formations stressed that they intend to maintain the cordon sanitaire, Weidel assured that AfD "will always be willing to get involved in a coalition" to form a government. "We are always ready to satisfy the will of the people in a German government," she said.

Defeat of the Social Democrats

The other side of the coin is Olaf Scholz's Social Democratic Party (SPD), which would obtain its worst result since the Second World War. Until now, the SPD governed with the liberals of the FDP and the Greens before the so-called "traffic light coalition" broke up last November due to ego fights and internal disagreements and early elections were called. The Social Democrats would fall to third position with 16% of the votes (almost 10 points less than four years ago), with the Greens hot on their heels with 13.5% of the votes (1.4 points less). The Left Party (Die Linke in German) would obtain 8.5% of the votes (3.7 points more), pending the final results.

The outgoing Chancellor appeared at the Social Democratic electoral headquarters and spoke of "defeat" and "bitter" results. "In the previous elections we had a better electoral result and I took responsibility for it. Today, the result is poor, and I take responsibility for it as well," he said, and congratulated Friedrich Merz and the CDU-CSU on their victory. Scholz also expressed disappointment at the strong growth of the Alternative for Germany: "We live in a democratic country (...) and that is why I want to say that the fact that a far-right party like AfD can achieve results like this in Germany is something we cannot accept. We can never accept it."

Despite strong protests against the far right on the streets – some 1.2 million people have taken part in nationwide protests since the end of January – the left-wing parties have not been able to convince Germans to vote for them to stop the extremists. According to projections by the ARD channel, the FDP (4.9%) and the other parties, including the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), would be left out of the parliamentary chamber, as they did not pass the 5% threshold required to obtain parliamentary representation. This bar has been set to avoid political fragmentation and facilitate the formation of a government.

Rising turnout

The turnout figures show that Germans have taken to the election as an important event. According to projections, turnout has risen to 84%, compared to 76.4% four years ago.

Germans do not vote directly for the German chancellor. Each voter can put two ticks on the ballot paper: first, they elect the deputy from their constituency. Half of the seats in the Bundestag are elected by direct mandates, and the other half by means of national party lists. Due to a reform, the new Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, will have 630 deputies, i.e. a hundred fewer than the previous one. Previously, there were 733 deputies and eight parties with seats.

According to the Basic Law (the German constitution), the newly elected Bundestag must meet for the constituent session no later than 30 days after the election, i.e. no later than 25 March. German MPs serve a four-year term. Once a government coalition has been agreed, the Federal Chancellor is elected in the Bundestag.