The German conservative opposition is projected to win the most votes in the country’s snap election as the mainstream parties vowed to battle a surge in far-right support off the back of a spate of terror attacks and economic turmoil.
Friedrich Merz, the head of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), hailed his party’s “terrific election campaign” as initial projections gave them 28.5 per cent of the vote. Around 83.5 per cent of Germans turned out to vote, the highest figure since the reunification in 1990.
In second place is the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right group that has called for the deportation of all foreign-born people in Germany who have committed a crime. Projections estimated that around 850,00 CDU voters had defected to the AfD, pushing them to 20.5 per cent of the total vote.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz conceded defeat for his center-left Social Democrats after what he called "a bitter election result”. Projections for ARD and ZDF public television showed his party finishing in third place with its worst postwar result in a national parliamentary election.
The far-right party’s leader, Alice Weidel, hailed the “historic” election result which saw her party double their vote from 2021. She then suggested the AfD “hand is outstretched” to join a coalition government. To deprive them of that, she added, would be tantamount to “voter fraud”.
Mr Merz said it would be months before the CDU worked out its coalition, until at least Easter. The coalition will require a 316-seat majority, with the CDU projected to have won 209 seats themselves. The most likely grouping will be with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and possibly, also, the Greens, who came third and fourth with a projected 119 and 90 seats respectively. Mr Merz says he would prefer to have just one coalition partner.
The election took place seven months earlier than planned after Mr Scholz's unpopular coalition collapsed in November, three years into a term that was increasingly marred by infighting. There was widespread discontent and not much enthusiasm for any of the candidates.
The campaign was dominated by worries about the yearslong stagnation of Europe's biggest economy and pressure to curb migration, something that caused friction after Merz pushed hard in recent weeks for a tougher approach. It took place against a background of growing uncertainty over the future of Ukraine and Europe's alliance with the United States.
Despite courting controversy after accepting AfD votes last month to push through a motion proposing tougher migration laws, the 69-year-old future chancellor and former corporate lawyer reiterated on Sunday night his promise not to form a coalition with the far-right political party. Germany has maintained a policy of not working with the far-right in government since the 1950s, known as “Brandmaeur”.
In a televised debate with all the party leaders, after the first election projections were released, Mr Merz said Ms Weidel “does not seriously believe that we will accept his hand”.
Whether Mr Merz will have a majority to form a coalition with Mr Scholz's Social Democrats or need a second partner too, which would realistically have to be the Greens, will depend on whether the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, or BSW, gets into parliament. While the Greens were on 12 per cent, BSW was hovering around the five per cent threshold needed to win seats.
The conservative leader said "the most important thing is to reestablish a viable government in Germany as quickly as possible”.
"I am aware of the responsibility," Mr Merz said. "I am also aware of the scale of the task that now lies ahead of us. I approach it with the utmost respect, and I know that it will not be easy."
"The world out there isn't waiting for us, and it isn't waiting for long-drawn-out coalition talks and negotiations," he told cheering supporters.
The Greens' candidate for chancellor, vice chancellor Robert Habeck, said that Mr Merz would do well to moderate his tone after a hard-fought campaign.
"We have seen the center is weakened overall, and everyone should look at themselves and ask whether they didn't contribute to that," he said. "Now he must see that he acts like a chancellor."
But German political analyst Nicolai von Ondarza says there is a strong feeling within the CDU that this is “a government of last chance” to fend off the appeal of the AfD and that they will “need to be more radical in delivering for economic growth and on migration” to do that.
He added that the AfD will probably spend the next few months trying to “tempt the CDU” by pushing proposals in the Bundestag on migration and tax policy that neither the SPD nor the Greens will support.
Mr Merz was greeted with cheers as he took to the stage at the CDU’s headquarters in Berlin on Sunday evening before admitting that he was “aware of the responsibility that now lies ahead” of him.
When he eventually assumes the role, his in-tray will be spilling over. German magazine Zeit described it on Sunday as “a mountain of problems of mythical proportions”.
He will need to tend to Germany’s struggling economy and infrastructure, become a leading European figure in supporting Ukraine against Russia and build ties with the Donald Trump administration, as well as fend off the rise of the AfD, a group that the US president has all but endorsed.
Speaking after the first election projections, Mr Merz warned that the new US administration had made it “clear that this government is fairly indifferent to Europe’s fate” and that the continent needed to be more self-reliant on defence.
Nonetheless, Mr Trump hailed the election result as a “great day” for the country, suggesting that the vote for conservatism showed that “the people of Germany got tired of the no common sense agenda, especially on energy and immigration”.
Writing in all caps and referring to himself in the third person, he added that it was also a victory for “the United States of America under the leadership of a gentleman named Donald J. Trump”.
He did not mention the AfD but senior figures in his administration, including X owner turned government official Elon Musk and vice-president JD Vance, have endorsed the party and called for an end to the “Brandmaeur”.
Last November, a failure to improve the struggling economy caused the collapse of the three-way coalition government under chancellor Olaf Scholz, forcing this snap election. The vote had originally been scheduled for September.
Mr Scholz struck a markedly different tone to his soon-to-be successor at the headquarters of his party, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), after they finished with their worst postwar result in a national parliamentary election. They are projected to win just 16.5 per cent of the vote, down nearly 10 per cent from the election in 2021.
He conceded it had been a “bitter election result” before urging his fellow parties not to work with the AfD.
“Now we have the far-right - the AfD - and the fact they got such a good election result is something we cannot accept and I will never accept,” Mr Scholz said.
“We need to stick to what we have always said, we mustn't work with the far right.”
During an AfD event on Saturday in Erfurt, the capital of the central German region of Thuringia, where the party won the state elections last September despite being designated as extremist, local officials were confident that the nation would follow in its footsteps in four years no matter what the mainstream parties did.
That victory in Thuringia was the first time the far right had won elections since Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.
“In time, we will get there,” said a smiling Stephan Moller, a senior figure and elected official in the Thuringia branch. “The way we did it in Thuringia and a few other federal states, the entire Federal Republic of Germany is a step behind this development.
“It will take another four years, then we will be the strongest party.”
Additional reporting by agencies