As expected, the conservative Christian Democratic Union and its sister party, the Christian Social Union, came out on top in Germany’s election on Sunday, with exit polls giving the CDU/CSU 28.5% of the vote. But the biggest celebrations were held by those supporting the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which scored a second-place finish with 20.7%, ahead of the centrist SPD’s 16.5%, and the Greens’ 11.7%.
The future of the CDU/CSU coalition now hangs on whether two minor parties, the center-right Free Democrats, aka FDP, and the hard-left Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht, or BSW, make the 5% threshold necessary to have representation in parliament. They are at 4.4% and 4.9%, respectively. A “grand coalition” between the CDU/CSU and SPD will only be possible if both FDP and BSW fail to get 5%. If either or both gain seats, the CDU/CSU and SPD will need an additional coalition partner, which would complicate negotiations and produce a less stable coalition.
What contributed to AfD’s success? The far right’s hard anti-migrant stance was reinforced byfour terror attacks in the past two months, including one hours before the start of theMunich Security Conference on Feb. 14 and another on Feb. 22, the day before the vote, when a Syrian migrantstabbed a Spanish tourist at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. The party was also endorsed by Elon Musk, whotold Germans to “move beyond past [World War II] guilt” during the campaign. In a post Sunday on Truth Social, US President Donald Trump said of the results, “This is a great day for Germany.”
What’s next? CDU leader Freidrich Merz promised toquickly form a coalition government, adding that “We fought a tough election campaign about important topics … now we will talk to each other.”
Germany’s “firewall,” an agreement among the traditional mainstream parties to shut AfD out of government coalitions, is expected to hold for now, but that could change in a future election. With the backing of one in five German voters, Alice Elisabeth Weidel, co-chair of the AfD, declared her party hadgone “mainstream.” “Our hand remains outstretched to form a government,” shesaid after the results. Should the conservatives choose to govern with left-wing parties rather than the AfD, she claimed, “next time we’ll come first.”