German Center Right Wins Election (with AfD in 2nd Place)

Germany’s Christian Democrats came out of yesterday’s election with the most seats in Parliament which sets up Friedrich Merz to be the country’s next Chancellor. Merz has been positioning himself as more conservative than outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz but much less so than President Trump.

Merz, an old-school conservative who has never held a government role previously, is set to lead Europe’s biggest economy and most populous state, after his center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party won 28.6% of the vote, according to preliminary official results.

“Let’s get the party started,” Merz, 69, told supporters as he declared victory at the CDU’s party headquarters in central Berlin, an apparent nod to wanting to get coalition negotiations underway quickly as the region grapples with US President Donald Trump’s upending of Europe and US relations.

In a televised roundtable later Sunday evening, Merz also criticized US “intervention” in the German election campaign in recent days. “The interventions from Washington were no less dramatic and drastic and ultimately outrageous than the interventions we have seen from Moscow,” he said. “We are under such massive pressure from two sides that my top priority is to create unity in Europe.”

He continued, “My absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.”

Merz may want to position himself in opposition to Trump but he also needs to recognize that there are a significant number of people in Germany who probably agree with Trump’s take on immigration. The Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) doubled it’s support coming in 2nd overall in this election.

Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has doubled its support in just four years to 20.8%, and has spread out from its support base in the east to become the second biggest political force in parliament…

For one in five Germans it has become normalised. “They’re just normal people,” said one young man of immigrant origin in Duisburg, a city in western Germany’s old industrial heartland…

The AfD’s leader Alice Weidel insists it is a libertarian, conservative movement, not racist. Its big increase in public support has coincided with a series of deadly attacks in the past nine months, all allegedly by immigrants.

AfD might have done even better in this election but Merz self-consciously adopted a tougher stance on immigration as a way to limit their success.

In a final head-to-head TV debate with centre-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz before Sunday’s general election, Merz warned that it’s the last chance to halt the surge of the Alternative for Germany party.

“In the next four years we must solve two big problems for this country: migration and the economy,” Merz said, warning that otherwise “we will definitively slide into right-wing populism”…

Merz said he would demand a shift to a more restrictive migration policy in any coalition and pointed to neighbouring Denmark where such measures saw off the far-right.

Despite this, Merz will try to form a governing coalition with the center-left party he just defeated. Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) came in third place with just 16% of the vote, but the SDP remains Merz’s only possible coalition partner since he and other parties in Germany have vowed not to allow AfD to become part of a government. The “firewall” against cooperation with AfD remains in place for now, nevertheless, the AfD will have 152 seats in Parliament.

The AfD is now Germany’s largest opposition party, making it a major political contender that cannot be ignored. It has driven the debate in Germany while forcing mainstream rivals to recognize that they need to do more on flashpoint issues if they want to retain votes…

Having a significant voice in parliament means that “they [the AfD] will be able to apply pressure on the major parties from a position of greater strength,” said Gemma Loomes, a Lecturer in Comparative Politics at Keele University.

“The surge in support will embolden the party to talk, perhaps even more aggressively, about the issues that matter most to them but that the major parties are reluctant to address,” Loomes added.

All this begs the question: can the so-called “firewall” – an unofficial agreement between Germany’s mainstream parties to band together to keep the AfD out of power – last?

In a display of the party’s confidence, the leader of the AfD’s youth wing, known as the Young Alternative (JA), told CNN on election night he is “certain” that the firewall would end after Sunday’s vote.

So we’ll see if Merz can put together a coalition and how long the firewall against AfD can hold. Here’s Alice Weidel, AfD leader, responding to a question about the firewall.