Germany has chosen a fresh national parliament. The election to the Bundestag was won by Friedrich Merz's Conservative Chadetry (CDU/CSU) which, although winning the most votes – 28.5% (+4.3 pp.), did not manage to cross the intellectual boundary of 30 percent.
In second place the utmost right, racist and flirting with Putinian Russia alternate for Germany (AfD) – for the Alice Weidel organization voted all 5th of Germany (20.8%, +104 pp.). This is by far the best national consequence of the electoral list to the right from chadecia throughout the past of post-war Germany. AfD gained the highest designation among residents and residents of the erstwhile GDR (up to 32 percent) and workers (30 percent), which is worth noting due to the fact that its election program is to the core neoliberal and antisocial bones.
The sad end of the ‘roadlight coalition’
The undeniably losses of the Sunday elections are the parties who until November 2024 formed the coalition of Chancellor Olaf Scholz – his Social Democratic organization (SPD) has driven to a catastrophic level of 16.4 percent (-7.3 pp.; this is the worst German-wide SPD score since 1887).
The Green organization worsened its 2021 score (11.6 percent, -3.1 pp.), but maintained support at a two-digit level. The Liberal FDP – the only centre-right organization in the Scholz coalition – failed to breach the electoral threshold (4.3%), losing over 7 percent points. erstwhile Finance Minister and FDP leader Christian Lindner, recognised for many years as a golden kid of German liberalism, resigned on Sunday evening.
Reservation Linke
The surprise of the evening was the amazingly advanced score of left-wing Linke (8.8%), which improved its election consequence from 2021 (+ 3.9 pp.). After leaving Sahra Wagenknecht's organization and the secessionists established a fresh organization ("Sahra Wagenknecht's Soy", in short BSW), Linke was on the verge of collapse – in the Euro-elections in May 2024 it only gained 2.7 percent. However, the communicative went differently: thanks to the skillful run and the weakness of social democracy Linke rose and the pro-Russian BSW... did not exceed the electoral threshold.
When the first forecasts appeared at 6:00 p.m., the tv station ZDF reported that the vagenknechters had won 5 percent of the vote, while ARD viewers were informed that the BSW was most likely under the threshold. ARD experts and experts were right – erstwhile votes were counted from all polling stations around 2:00 a.m., it turned out that BSW won precisely 4.972 percent (there were 13,435 votes missing)!
Friedrich Merz's bitter triumph
Despite the fact that chadecja – an alliance of CDU and Bavarian CSU – won by far the most votes, it is hard to consider its consequence as a convincing triumph (it is worth reminding that in the Bundestag election the chadecia led by Angela Merkel never went below 32 percent). Among any commentators and commentators, there have been opinions that right-wing Merz lowered the result of the charity by a tactical error, which was the artificial triggering of the CDU/CSU parliamentary faction resolution on Migration reduction was voted only by the votes of the AfD and BSW Members.
As CDU leader Friedrich Merz inactive excludes any cooperation with AfD, the only sensible coalition option appears a common government with SPD. However, Merz is fortunate in his misery: since the threshold did not exceed the FDP and the BSW, the possible "great coalition" would have most of the mandates in the Bundestag, which will make it much easier to talk between parties. If the BSW had joined parliament, Merz would gotta negociate with the Green organization as well, despite the fact that Bavarian Prime Minister Markus Söder swore before the elections that his CSU would not agree to any coalition with the Greens.
The Conservative and economical liberal Friedrich Merz are waiting for hard negotiations with the Keynesist SPD, which will most likely request a minimum wage increase of up to 15 euro/h, maintaining a inexpensive German-wide ticket for urban and regional communications (the alleged Deutschlandticket) and guarantees concerning the state pension system.
Rather, it is doubtful that the social democrats would agree to Merz's proposed changes in the taxation strategy (including, among others, reductions in income taxation for the richest) and the most neoliberal ideas of chadeization for the improvement of the German welfare state.
On the another hand, the key issue for the CDU to reduce migration is the possible bone of disagreement in the negotiations with the SPD (social democrats have serious doubts as to whether the measures proposed by Merza to reduce irregular migration are compatible with EU law).
Wounded SPD, reinforced Linke
Sunday elections were surely a black day for the German left – 3 "traditional" parties left of the center (SPD, Greens, Linke) scored only 36.8 percent. From the left-wing perspective, it is only affirmative that Linke's successful rescue action and the effective defence of the Bundestag Gate against the BSW, which combines "conservative left-wingness" with anti-wokeism, opposition to the current migration policy and, worst of all, sympathy for Putinian Russia.
The Socialdemocracy was punished for the cool kind of Chancellor Scholz, who not only failed to find the appropriate language of communication with the electorate and failed to keep an emotional bond with his constituents, but above all was incapable to keep in line the protagonists and protagonists of the chaotic "coalition of street lights" (named after the colors of the organization that were part of it – the red of the SPD, the yellow of the FDP, the greens).
Some of the coalition's projects were communicated in a fatal way, for example, the amendment of the Heat Sources Act (which resulted in the ban on the installation of fresh gas-fired and oil-fired boilers), which resulted in a immense public argument between the Greens and the FDP. Although Germany needs billions of euros for urgent investments – thousands of kilometres of railway lines are waiting for modernisation, the state of the infrastructure of local governments is deteriorating, the expansion of the power transmission network requires immense investments – liberal finance minister Christian Lindner powerfully refused to loosen the rules of the alleged debt brake, which limits the anticipation of drawing fresh public debt. The FDP did not even agree to a improvement of care services, the main nonsubjective of which was to reduce poorness among German children, pointing to besides advanced costs of specified a solution.
The coalition's sad finale was budget negotiations for 2025, erstwhile Lindner refused to let assistance to the fighting Ukraine to be financed with fresh credits – he suggested that coalitions search savings in their ministries, which the SPD and the Greens did not agree to. As a result, Chancellor Scholz dismissed Minister Linder, then the FDP left the coalition, the government lost the majority, the Bundestag dissolved and fresh elections were announced. The Liberals have received a salty bill for their actions in the coalition and will be able to look at the improvement of the situation from the "gang" of the extra-parliamentary opposition.
Something ends, something starts
Olaf Scholz immediately took work for losing the election, congratulated Friedrich Merz on winning and humbly announced that he would not run for office in the fresh government. The main negotiator in the “coalition poker” on behalf of the SPD, as well as the fresh organization leader will most likely be national defence minister Boris Pistorius.
According to the polls, it is the 64-year-old Pistorius, the erstwhile mayor of the city of Osnabrück and the interior minister of Lower Saxony, who is present Germany's most popular politician. In November 2024, there was even an thought for him to run in accelerated elections as the leader of the SPD list, but being a loyal "party soldier" he resigned to the incumbent chancellor (there are besides commentators who claim to have given Scholz a peculiar loss). As head of the MON, he oversees a multi-billion-dollar program of modernization of the Bundeswehr and with large commitment he has liquidated German military aid to the Ukrainian army.
Since 1949, the SPD has co-founded 4 times with the chade of the “great coalition”: from 1966 to 1969, 2005 to 2009, 2013-2017 and 2017-2021. The governments of the CDU/CSU twice ended with an electoral disaster for the SPD (in 2009 and 2017), but twice the Social Democrats managed to make a fresh national government after the election without the participation of the chadeks (in 1969 and 2021). Whether the SPD will come out of the coalition from the CDU Merza weakened or reinforced will depend not only on the degree to which it will implement its electoral programme (and block the least reasonable pro-business ideas of the CDU), but besides on whether it will find again a language that will scope its conventional electoral and voters: workers and a widely understood salariate, that is, the middle-class working in which it began to bust the far-right AfD.
Linke – a function model for the European Left?
The spectacular return to the Bundestag Linke is primarily due to the courageous run of a group that had nothing to lose. Although Linke is simply a more left-wing version of the SPD after the departure of the BSW – a tattoo with Rosa Luxembourg on the forearm of a co-leader of the Heidi Reichinnek list or authoritative memes with Marx is simply a socialist folklore – she managed to make a populist message that she was the only formation fighting billionaires, costly rents and advanced bills for heat and food (not giving up on sex minorities, foreigners or people seeking shelter in Germany).
As the only democratic party, she successfully fought for coverage at TikTok, where so far the far-right group Alice Weidel reigned, pumping into a virtual network of hectolitre racist slop. The investment in social media paid off: among voters and voters up to the age of 30, Linke surpassed AfD from 23 to 21 percent, contributing to its good result.
Is Linke a function model for the European organization of the left? Not exactly. Although the supporters and sympathizers of Putinian Russia disappeared after the departure of the vagenknechts, Linke inactive lives anti-imperialist fantasies of the Western European Left: condemns Russian aggression in Ukraine, even grants Ukraine the right to self-defence, but does not agree to send the fighting Ukraine German weapons and military equipment. It supports sanctions, but only against Russian oligarchs and Russian military industry, not against “ordinary Russians and Russians”. She is opposed to NATO, inactive turning her nose to extend the Alliance to the area of the erstwhile associate States of the Warsaw Pact (i.e. Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and the Baltic States), but at the same time does not support the creation of a European army. Nor does he agree to increase his defence spending, surviving in a naive illusion that another powers will besides disarm as in the 1990s.
During the election campaign, Linke skillfully hid the issue of Ukraine, but left-wing reader, especially surviving in east and Central Europe, should be aware that this group did not do its lesson from the war in Ukraine.
Although the Bundestag elections strengthened the AfD, they besides mobilized many Germans and Germans against the far right – as many as 82.5 percent of voters (this is the highest turnout since 1998) took part in the vote – it will depend on politicians and politicians forming the future national government whether Germany goes the Austrian road, However, whether they can regain the assurance of voters and voters, neutralising the deadly threat to German democracy from the anti-EU and proputin utmost right.
