German election: Friedrich Merz's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) wins election
The CDU-CSU won 28.5 percent of the vote and will lead the next government, while Alice Weidel's AfD reached a record 20.5 percent and pushed the Social Democrats into third place; Germany's political reconfiguration poses challenges in the European Union and in the relationship with the United States.
German opposition leader Friedrich Merz, a conservative, won an easy victory in Sunday's national election, while the Alternative for Germany party nearly doubled its support, the strongest showing for a far-right party since World War II, according to projections.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz has acknowledged defeat for his centre-left Social Democrats after what he called a "bitter election result". Projections by public broadcasters ARD and ZDF showed his party would finish third, its worst post-war result in a national parliamentary election.
Merz has promised to move quickly to form a coalition government, but that is likely to be a difficult task.
A discontented nation
The election came seven months earlier than originally planned after Scholz's unpopular coalition collapsed in November, three years into a term increasingly marred by internal disputes. There was widespread discontent and little enthusiasm for the candidates.
The campaign was dominated by concerns about the multi-year stagnation of Europe's largest economy and pressure to curb migration, causing friction after Merz pushed hard in recent weeks for a tougher approach. It came amid growing uncertainty about the future of Ukraine and Europe's alliance with the United States.
Germany is the most populous of the 27 countries that make up the European Union and a major member of NATO. It has been the second largest arms supplier to Ukraine, after the United States. It will be critical in shaping the continent's response to the challenges of the coming years, including the confrontational foreign and trade policy of President Donald Trump's administration.
The projections, based on exit polls and partial counts, put support for Merz's Union bloc at around 28.5% and for Alternative for Germany, or AfD, at around 20.5%, nearly double their 2021 showing.
Support for Scholz's Social Democrats is estimated at just over 16%, well below the last election and its previous record low of 20.5% in 2017. The Greens, their remaining partners in the outgoing government, had just over 12%.
Of the three smaller parties, one, the Left Party, strengthened its position, gaining up to 9% of the vote after a remarkable comeback during the campaign. The other two parties, the pro-business Free Democrats and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, were hovering around the 5% threshold needed to win seats.
A difficult task for the winner
Whether Merz will have a majority to form a coalition with Scholz's Social Democrats or will also need a second partner will depend on how many parties make it to parliament. The conservative leader said that "the most important thing is to re-establish a viable government in Germany as soon as possible."
"I am aware of the responsibility I have," said Merz. "I am also aware of the magnitude of the task ahead of us. I approach it with the utmost respect and I know that it will not be easy." "The outside world is not waiting for us, nor is it expecting long talks and coalition negotiations," he told cheering supporters.
The Greens' candidate for chancellor, Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck, said Merz would do well to moderate his tone after a sometimes contentious election campaign.
"We have seen that the centre is weakened overall and everyone will have to look at themselves and ask themselves whether they have contributed to this," Habeck said. "Now they must make sure that they act like a chancellor."
The Greens were the party that suffered the least from participating in Scholz's unpopular government. Social Democrats general secretary Matthias Miersch hinted that their defeat was not a surprise: "These elections have not been lost in the last eight weeks."
A far-right party delighted
Tino Chrupalla, one of the AfD's leaders, told his cheering supporters that "today we have achieved something historic." "We are now the political centre and have left the margins behind," he said. The party's previous best result was 12.6% in 2017, when it first entered the national parliament.
The party's candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, said her party is "open to coalition negotiations" with Merz's party and that "otherwise, no policy change is possible in Germany." But Merz has repeatedly and categorically ruled out working with the AfD, as other mainstream parties have done, and did so again during a televised post-election exchange with Wiedel and other leaders.
Weidel suggested the AfD would not have to make many concessions to secure a theoretical coalition, arguing that the Union largely copied its programme and ridiculed its "Pyrrhic victory". "He will not be able to implement it with left-wing parties," he said. If Merz ends up forming an alliance with the Social Democrats and the Greens, "it will be an unstable government that will not last four years, there will be an interim chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and in the next few years we will overtake the Union."
Merz ruled out that voters would want a coalition with AfD. "We have fundamentally different views, for example on foreign policy, security policy and in many other areas, in relation to Europe, the euro and NATO," he stressed.
"You want the opposite of what we want, that's why there will be no cooperation," Merz added. Scholz harshly criticised the AfD's success: "We can never accept that. I will not accept it and I will never accept it."
More than 59 million of the country's 84 million people were eligible to vote for the 630 members of parliament's lower house, the Bundestag, who will take their seats beneath the glass dome of Berlin's iconic Reichstag building.
