Germans went to the polls on Sunday in what felt like the country’s most intensely anticipated election in decades. The preliminary results reflected what pollsters had predicted: a right-wing turn with a comfortable win for the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU) alliance and second place for the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party (AfD).
However, the fears of many German voters also appear confirmed: The results make it difficult for the CDU/CSU to form a stable coalition and even harder to implement the policy changes so many want. Germany’s political and economic future hangs in the balance.
A record 84 percent of Germany’s nearly 60 million eligible voters turned out — the highest percentage since 1990. The vast majority voted for change. The government of outgoing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was deeply unpopular. Looking back on the three years of his left-wing coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and Free Liberals (FDP), only 17 percent of Germans were satisfied with their work, according to a survey taken just before the election.
So it came as no surprise that the former ruling parties were punished by voters. With about 16 percent, Scholz’s center-left SPD got its worst result since the 19th century. Their coalition partners, the Greens, are also slightly down from their 2021 result with about 12 percent, while the preliminary figures for the liberal FDP hover about the 5 percent hurdle each party has to cross to make it into parliament.
So combined, only about one-third of Germans voted for the parties that were in charge for the past three years. It should have been an open goal for the opposition. Yet the CDU/CSU appears to remain just below 30 percent, according to projections. That was enough for them to win comfortably — and to make the conservative candidate, Friedrich Merz, the likely next chancellor — but it is a long way off from a majority needed to pass legislation through parliament.
The real winners of the election are the political fringes. On the right, the AfD roughly doubled its vote share from the last election in 2021 and received about 20 percent of the vote. The far-left party Die Linke more than doubled its result to just under 9 percent.
This constellation might make it extremely difficult for the conservatives to turn their election victory into the decisive political U-turn many voters want. They have ruled out working with the AfD, upholding the so-called firewall to keep the centrist parties from working with parties further to the right. So they will have to look to a historically unpopular SPD as a coalition partner. Whether they will have a majority together remains unclear.
All will depend on whether the smaller parties make it into the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament. The preliminary results show two of them very close to the 5 percent threshold: the liberal FDP, and the left-wing and Russia-friendly Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance-Reason and Justice. If they make it, they will take up their seats according to their vote share. If they do not, the free seats will increase the weight of the other parties respectively. So whether a centrist bloc of CDU/CSU and SPD can form a slim majority might hinge on a few thousand votes either way.
It is conceivable that the SPD might go along with the conservatives’ plans to introduce major changes on economic and immigration policy, the two hot-button issues of this election. Germany’s economy contracted for two years in a row with no immediate improvement in sight and many Germans are deeply worried about this.
According to recent polls, about two-thirds also want drastic changes to curb illegal immigration.
Following a spate of deadly attacks perpetrated in Germany in recent months by men who had entered the country as refugees, Merz had promised his potential voters that, as chancellor, he would introduce tighter controls at the borders and deport more unsuccessful asylum seekers. In economic policy, Merz would favor deregulation and reindustrialization — both anathema to the center-left SPD and the Green party, who drove policy in the opposite direction for the past three years.
AfD leader Alice Weidel, who appeared satisfied with her party’s record result, was all too happy to point out this dilemma, arguing in interviews with the German media that the conservatives will likely break their promises to their center-right voters if they collaborate with the left-wing parties instead of hers. She seems set to use her increased seat share in parliament to highlight this at any opportunity over the next few years.
The two centrist parties might have enough common ground in both areas to bring about change, but if they need a third coalition partner, things will get sticky. The Green party has traditionally favored a pro-migration course and already lost voters to the left-wing Die Linke for even suggesting that it is willing to work with the conservatives. The SPD fell out spectacularly with the FDP when their coalition broke down last year over economic policy. Either way, a three-way coalition would be incredibly difficult to negotiate and even more difficult to govern with effectively.
In the build-up to the election, the vast majority of voters worried about just such a scenario, with 70 percent saying in a recent survey that they were concerned that no stable government would emerge from this vote.
When the results emerged, Martin Huber, a prominent conservative politician, said the most important goal for his party is now to ensure that “people can regain their basic trust in politics,” while his party colleague Thorsten Frei warned that it would be an “enormous challenge” to form a stable government.
Much is at stake if this does not work. Carsten Linnemann, the deputy leader of the CDU and the main man behind its election campaign, issued a stark warning in the German media: If there is no stable government that can deliver real change, the fringes might grow further, perhaps even to a point where they get most seats between them at the next election.
The preliminary election results will leave most Germans more worried than optimistic. All eyes will be on the margins of the smaller parties and which coalitions remain possible. In the build-up, many Germans spoke of a “schicksalswahl” — an election of fate. They were not exaggerating. The future of German politics seems balanced on a knife edge.
Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and journalist. This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
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