Ulrike Franke
The results from the German election are in. The winner is Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democrats, although with the second-worst result in the party’s history: 28.5%. Politically, there is only one two-party coalition possible, the alliance formerly known as the “grand coalition”, i.e. a coalition of the conservatives and the social democrats (SPD) who secured just 16.4% of the vote.
Together, they have 328 seats in the Bundestag, 12 more than needed for a majority, an acceptable, though not great margin. Hence, a CDU-led government with a Chancellor Merz and the SPD as the smaller coalition partner seems almost guaranteed, despite rumblings within the SPD. This, to be clear, is not a coalition formed out of enthusiasm or political compatibility, but mainly a lack of alternatives.
Most international observers have, beyond the question of who will form the government, focused on the other obvious winner of these elections: the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) which secured a whopping 20.8% of the votes, coming in second. It gained over 10 percentage points compared to three years ago, and in some constituencies in East Germany, got over 40% of the votes. AfD is entering the parliament with 152 MPs. (Mathematically, a CDU/CSU coalition with the AfD is also possible, this option has however been categorically excluded by Merz who referred to the so-called “firewall” towards the far-right, which has gained some international notoriety after having been criticized recently by US- Vice President J.D. Vance.)
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