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LAST UPDATE | 23 Feb
GERMANY’S CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATS are set to win the country’s parliament election, with the far-right claiming second place past the outgoing government parties.
The snap election was taking place after the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition late last year.
An exit poll released as polls closed suggests that the conservative Christian Democrats will finish on 29%, the far-right AFD on 19.5% and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) on 16%.
Germany’s worsening economy and migration dominated the campaign, which saw business tycoon Elon Musk also weigh in at points in support of the AFD.
The result means that the Christian Democrats (CDU) leader Friedrich Merz is is in pole position to become chancellor – making it the first time the centre-right party has won an election since Angela Merkel stepped down as leader seven years ago.
It’s a bad election for Scholz and the SPD, having seen their support plunge by almost 10% from when they finished first four years ago.
Over the past 27 years, the SPD has spent 23 of them as a coalition partner in government – but this has seen accusations from some of its voters and others on the left that the party has watered down its own policies.
Scholz’s SPD led a coalition with The Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) but it collapsed late last year amid disagreements on resolving Germany’s recession hit economy and its climate policy.
Each party has lost support on its 2021 result, with The Greens suggested to have received 13.2% and the FDP 4.9%.
Of the other opposition parties, Die Linke (The Left) is forecast to receive 8.6% of the vote while the BSW – a socially conservative splinter from Die Linke – is flagged to get 4.8%.
The 69-year-old Merz retired from politics for the guts of 20 years after he lost out to Merkel as leader, but returned to the fold in recent years to take the reins.
In his time away he worked as a corporate lawyer for a number of major companies, including at investment fund Blackrock.
Merz sought to take a hard line on migration in this election campaign, which he views as a way of draining some of the AFD’s recent support.
But the moves have struck fear into migrant communities and some Germans.
When The Journal visited Germany’s capital Berlin this week, it found many who voiced worry that Germany’s mainstream parties have tried too much to appease hardliners in this election campaign.
Once in office, Merz has promised a “strong voice” in Europe at a time of chaotic disruption in the EU’s biggest economy.
There has been upheaval in US-EU relations after Donald Trump’s direct outreach to Russian President Vladimir Putin over European heads to end the Ukraine war.
In his final campaign event in Munich yesterday, Merz said the EU needed to walk tall to be able to “sit at the main table” of the world powers.
It’s a groundbreaking result for the AFD, potentially doubling its vote share.
It positions a party that, even now, is subject to monitoring by German intelligence services due to concerns of “extremism” within its ranks, as the new leading group in the Bundestag’s opposition.
The result is a record for a far-right party since the 1930s, and while it’s unlikely they will get into government, they are set to become the largest opposition party.
When it was founded in 2013, the party took a strong Euro-sceptic line but has gradually settled in on migration as the issue around which to build its platform.
This has gained traction in a country where, as of 2022, a quarter of the 80-million-plus population had arrived from elsewhere – before the influx of Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia’s assault.
The party received heavyweight support from some of US president Trump’s allies in recent weeks.
Elon Musk, White House advisor and billionaire owner of Tesla, SpaceX and social media site X, was among those seeking to boost AFD.
The South African addressed AFD meetings and even appeared in a controversial online chat along their leader Alice Weidel.
But while it undoubtedly boosted the AFD’s profile, it’s less certain whether Musk’s involvement swung more support towards the far-right. Some polling suggested it split voters.
A key moment in the campaign saw the collapse of a long-standing agreement among German’s mainstream parties to not work with far-right politicians, a consensus since the end of World War II to prevent the reemergence of extremely right-wing parties .
This ‘firewall’ was broken when Mertz’s centre-right conservatives agreed to vote with the AFD on a non-binding proposal to restrict migration.
But it became a rallying point for others, with Die Linke (The Left) now almost set to double its 2021 result after honing in on the threats to the firewall.
In one fiery speech that was viewed millions of times, Bundestag leader Heidi Reichinnek said that Merz was allowing himself to be “used as a stepping stone” for the AFD.
In an emotional address tonight, Reichinnek said voters had helped Die Linke undergo a “resurrection” through this campaign.
Addressing supporters following the exit poll, Merz called for a new government to be formed “as quickly as possible”.
“The world out there is not waiting for us and it is not waiting for lengthy coalition talks and negotiations,” Merz said.
To build a majority, Merz is expected to reach out first to the SPD.
He already has the CDU’s Bavarian sister party Christian Social Union (CSU) on side – the party have an unusual arrangement where the CDU don’t stand in the southeastern region against the CSU and instead work together.
But if Merz wants to ensure his coalition gain enough seats, he may also reach out to the Greens, although the the CSU has so far rejected this.
Much depends on the fate of smaller parties in the complex parliamentary arithmetic of the Bundestag. Several hovered around the 5% cutoff mark for re-entry into parliament and feared for their survival.
Merz may speak to the economic liberals in the FDU, but it is not clear at present whether the party will meet the 5% threshold required to ensure representation in parliament.
With reporting by – © AFP 2025
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