AfD on the rise
Just the beginning? Six lessons from the Bundestag election
Friedrich Merz has been given a clear mandate to form a government in Germany. The tenacious CDU leader wants to revive a form of government that has fallen out of favor. The most important results of the German general election - and what we can learn from them.
It has been a long and winding road to power for Friedrich Merz, peppered with disappointments, defeats and a sabbatical in business. Now the 69-year-old has reached the top after all.
Everything looks set for him to become the tenth Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany - even if the result of 28.6 percent is not what he once imagined. As recently as January, he had stated that he expected the election result to be "more in the second half of the thirties".
Merz didn't care on Sunday evening: "Now Rambo Zambo can be in the Adenauer House," he shouted from the stage at the CDU party headquarters. However, the result is likely to weaken his negotiating position.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) wanted to do it a second time like in 2021, when he had made up around 15 percentage points on the CDU/CSU during the election campaign and finished with a narrow lead. But miracles are not so easy to repeat, especially not when you have just crash-landed with your government.
The race to catch up has failed to materialize. The Social Democrats have achieved their worst result in a national parliamentary election since 1887, when the SPD was still called the Socialist Workers' Party.
Scholz's days as chancellor are now numbered and he wants nothing more to do with forming a new government. However, he does not want to end his political career completely. Scholz narrowly defended his constituency in Potsdam against the AfD and announced before the election that he would remain in the Bundestag in this case. SPD party leader Lars Klingbeil is doing the opposite and taking the plunge: despite the election disaster, he still wants to become parliamentary group leader.
The "traffic light" coalition failed with a bang in November, and yet the three protagonists returned as if nothing had happened: Scholz, his Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens) and Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP). They have now been punished for three years of constant bickering: in 2021, the SPD, Greens and FDP together achieved 52%, now it is 32.3%. Only rarely has a government been punished so severely.
The FDP has even been kicked out of the Bundestag. In addition to Scholz, FDP leader Lindner also drew the consequences on Sunday: "I am now retiring from active politics," he wrote on X. Only Habeck has yet to decide what will happen next. He is still speculating on government participation.
Politics has been spared a difficult three-party coalition - nobody really wanted that after the experience with the traffic light system. Now it all boils down to a coalition between the CDU/CSU and SPD - there really is no alternative. Black-green is not enough.
This means that the so-called GroKo is morphing from an unloved stopgap solution into the coalition of choice. This is also how voters see it: according to a snap poll by the YouGov institute, 44% would prefer this government.
However, it is questionable whether SPD members would approve a coalition with the CDU/CSU. The NoGroKo campaign launched by the Jusos in 2017/18 was not that long ago. The SPD would probably let its members vote on such government participation again.
None of the other parties can find a way to counter the AfD. It has doubled its result from 10.4 to 20.8 percentage points. Never before has a party classified by the Office for the Protection of the Constitution as right-wing extremist in parts been so strongly represented in a Bundestag. AfD politicians are now likely to be the first to respond to the Chancellor in government statements - and the very first to speak in the major general budget debate.
However, no one wants to form a coalition with them. Election winner Merz, who pushed a migration resolution through the Bundestag with the help of the AfD, also makes this clear. According to election analyses by polling institutes Infratest dimap and Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, he has struck a chord with voters: 70 to 74% reject a coalition with the AfD.
However, this does not bother the party leaders on election night. "We'll wait and see," says party leader Tino Chrupalla. The AfD has long been looking ahead to 2029 with state elections in Saxony, Thuringia, Brandenburg and the next federal election - and senses an opportunity here. The party has already won almost all constituencies in this election.
The Left Party is a big winner on election night. Many had already written it off months ago; after the founding of Sahra Wagenknecht's BSW, it shrank completely. However, the discussion about the "firewall" to the AfD and a clever social media campaign have enabled the Left to make a comeback.
And what a comeback it is: with 8.8 percent, it is doing even better than in many polls. When it comes to social justice, many people now tend to trust the left - which is a problem for the Greens and SPD.
The democratic center no longer has a majority among younger voters. According to Infratest dimap, 25 percent of 18 to 24-year-olds voted for the Left, 20 percent for the AfD and six percent for the BSW. According to Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, the Left Party is also the strongest party among the under-30s with 24%, followed by the AfD with 21%.
The situation was different in the last election: Back then, the FDP and Greens in particular were much stronger among young voters. Economic issues such as inflation and a lack of prospects (home ownership) are likely to have been major factors here, according to initial post-election surveys.
This article has been automatically translated,
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