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Christian Democratic Union party leader Friedrich Merz speaks at the party headquarters after the exit poll results are announced for the 2025 general election, in Berlin, Germany, on Feb. 23, 2025.
Conservatives come first, far right second in German election
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 28.6% 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 20.8%, doubling its share of the vote since the last election. It beat the centrist SPD’s 16.4% and the Greens’ 11.6%.
The future coalition for the CDU/CSU hung on whether two minor parties, the center-right Free Democrats, aka FDP, and the hard-left Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht, or BSW, made the 5% threshold necessary to have representation in parliament. Preliminary results show they did not – at 4.3% and 4.97%, respectively, but BSW has said it will look into legal avenues to have the results reexamined because of its near miss. If the results stand, it means the CDU/CSU and the SPD will most likely form a “grand coalition” and not be beholden to a third coalition partner, which would have complicated negotiations and produced a less stable coalition.
What contributed to AfD’s success? The far right’s hard anti-migrant stance was reinforced by four terror attacks in the past two months, including one hours before the start of the Munich Security Conference on Feb. 14 and another on Feb. 22, the day before the vote, when a Syrian migrant stabbed a Spanish tourist at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. The party was also endorsed by Elon Musk, who told 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 to quickly form a coalition government and will become chancellor, adding that “We fought a tough election campaign about important topics … now we will talk to each other.” Merz said aims to strengthen Europe so it can “achieve real independence from the US.”
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 had gone “mainstream.” “Our hand remains outstretched to form a government,” she said 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.”
Disgraced AfD leader Maximilian Krah.
Euro Parliament group expels AfD
Even the far right has its limits. The European Parliament’s “Identity and Democracy” group of populist right-wing parties – including the Alternative for Germany, France’s National Rally, and Italy’s League, among others – expelled all nine AfD members on Thursday.
The move comes just weeks ahead of European Parliament elections on June 9 in which the far right is expected to make serious gains. It also comes a day after Maximilian Krah, head of AfD, said he’d step down over two scandals – one involving a senior staffer being charged with spying for China, and another stemming from Krah telling an Italian newspaper that not all members of the Nazi SS were war criminals. But sacrificing Krah wasn’t enough – and National Rally leader Marine Le Pensaid her party needed a “clean break” from AfD.
The expulsion was a bold move, given the AfD’s popularity. As recently as January, it was Germany’s second most popular party, polling at 22%, though it has since dropped six percentage points to tie for second place with the Social Democrat Party.
Polls have predicted the Identity and Democracy group’s number of seats in the European Parliament could rise from 59 to about 84 (some predicted a high of 93 before AfD’s recent scandals). National Rally, meanwhile, is surging in the polls.
What does this mean? Apart from hurting its reputation, expulsion means AfD loses access to the group’s shared resources, collective voice in parliament, and possibly some funding. But it doesn’t mean AfD members can’t run. In fact, party leaders said Thursday that they remained optimistic about the election. “We are confident we will continue to have reliable partners at our side in the new legislative period,” they said.
A demonstrator holds a sign reading "Hate makes you small" at a rally organized by the German Trade Union Confederation on "For Democracy and Solidarity" on Jan. 27, 2024.
A black eye for Germany’s far right
That’s one way to understand why the Alternative for Germany party, or AfD, was narrowly defeated last weekend in a local election in a place it has scored wins in the past. A recent scandal involving contact between AfD leaders and officials considered neo-Nazis – conversations that reportedly centered on plans to deport immigrants, including some who have German citizenship – set off a firestorm.
Last weekend, anti-AfD protests filled the streets of some 30 German cities, and that sentiment appears to have pushed higher-than-expect turnout among anti-AfD voters for the election in the German state of Thuringia.
There will be larger elections in this region in September, and AfD may well perform much better. But last weekend’s protests and local election results, from a place considered an AfD stronghold, remind us that Europe’s anti-populist political forces are strong too.