{"id":419537,"date":"2025-02-24T10:16:41","date_gmt":"2025-02-24T09:16:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2025\/02\/24\/elezioni-germania-risultati-merz\/"},"modified":"2025-02-24T14:59:22","modified_gmt":"2025-02-24T13:59:22","slug":"merzs-cdu-wins-german-elections","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/02\/24\/merzs-cdu-wins-german-elections\/","title":{"rendered":"Merz&#8217;s CDU wins German elections"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">Brussels &#8211; Everything as planned:\u00a0the <strong>Christian Democrats<\/strong> of <strong>Friedrich Merz won<\/strong> Germany&#8217;s\u00a0<strong>snap\u00a0legislative elections<\/strong>,\u00a0and he will succeed\u00a0<strong>Olaf Scholz<\/strong> as federal chancellor. The latter&#8217;s Social Democratic Party collapsed, as did the Greens and Liberals. The <strong>post-Nazi ultra-right of AfD<\/strong> is the <strong>second largest party,<\/strong> with over a fifth of the support, while\u00a0the <strong>radical left of the <i>Linke <\/i><\/strong>did better than expected. On paper, there seems to be\u00a0<strong>no puzzle of coalitions<\/strong>\u00a0to give the country a stable government, as the Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, a tested pair, have a solid majority.<\/p>\n<h3 id='the-ballot-box-response'  id=\"boomdevs_1\" class=\"p1\">The ballot box response<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">The stakes in yesterday&#8217;s (Feb. 23) vote were high, and Germans responded:\u00a0official data in hand, the <strong>voter turnout<\/strong> to renew the <i>Bundestag<\/i> <a href=\"https:\/\/bundeswahlleiterin.de\/info\/presse\/mitteilungen\/bundestagswahl-2025\/27_25_vorlaeufiges-ergebnis.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">reached<\/a> <strong>82.5 percent<\/strong>, more than 6 points higher than\u00a076.4 percent in 2021.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">As <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2025\/02\/21\/german-elections-the-great-uncertainty-in-politically-fractured-country\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">forecast<\/a>, the winner of this round of elections is the <strong><i>Union <\/i><\/strong>(composed of the <strong>CDU<\/strong> and its Bavarian sister party <strong>CSU<\/strong>), which took home <strong>28.6 percent<\/strong>. It was one of the worst results ever for the conservatives and significantly less than the 30-31 percent that polls had predicted, but still <strong>4.4 points higher<\/strong> than the 24.1 percent four years ago that had relegated them to the opposition. The leader of the CDU, <strong>Friedrich Merz,<\/strong> will thus be <strong>the next <i>Bundeskanzler<\/i><\/strong>. In terms of seats, this victory translates into 208 deputies out of the 630 total in the House.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">In the second place, as projections anticipated, came the ultra-right <strong><i>Alternative f\u00fcr Deutschland<\/i> (AfD)<\/strong> of <strong>Alice Weidel<\/strong> and <strong>Tino Chrupalla,<\/strong> who, bypassing the SPD, secured\u00a0<strong>20.8 percent <\/strong>of the votes.\u00a0It was the <strong>party&#8217;s best result <\/strong>since its founding in 2013, and it doubled from the 10.4 it won in the last legislative elections &#8212; no other formation gained as much support between the two election rounds: a\u00a0treasure of 152 seats.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Third place went to the <strong>Social Democrats of the SDP,<\/strong> the outgoing party of Chancellor <strong>Olaf Scholz,<\/strong> which suffered the most significant loss in this election (-9.3 percent since 2021, when they came in first), remaining <strong>at 16.4 percent<\/strong>. It was also the <strong>party&#8217;s worst outcome\u00a0since 1949<\/strong>. The number of Social Democratic seats at the Bundestag thus shrinks to 120 elected members.<\/p>\n<div class=\"flourish-embed\" data-src=\"story\/2927419\"><script src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/resources\/embed.js\"><\/script><noscript><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/public.flourish.studio\/story\/2927419\/thumbnail\" width=\"100%\" alt=\"visualization\" \/><\/noscript><\/div>\n<p class=\"p1\">All the forces of\u00a0the <strong>traffic-light coalition<\/strong> in Berlin&#8217;s government over the past four years fared poorly:\u00a0in addition to the <i>debacle<\/i> of the SPD, the <strong>Greens (<em>B\u00fcndnis 90\/Die Gr\u00fcnen<\/em>)<\/strong> of outgoing vice chancellor <strong>Robert Habeck<\/strong>\u00a0lost over\u00a03\u00a0percentage points on the ground, reaching\u00a0<strong>11.6 percent<\/strong> (85 seats). The L<strong>iberals of the FDP<\/strong>, led by former finance minister <strong>Christian Lindner<\/strong>, lost more than 7 points and thus remained <strong>excluded from the <i>Bundestag<\/i><\/strong> because, with their <strong>4.3 percent<\/strong>, they failed to cross the 5 percent threshold.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Those, on the other hand, who achieved an almost unhoped-for success (so much so that there is talk of a true &#8220;political resurrection&#8221;)\u00a0are\u00a0the radical left of <strong><i>Die Linke<\/i><\/strong>. The party of <strong>Heidi Reichinnek<\/strong> and <strong>Jan van Aken<\/strong> did better than forecast, winning just shy of\u00a09 percent: with <strong>8.8 percent,<\/strong> it will take home 64 deputies. Finally, by a whisker, the <strong>BSW<\/strong> of <strong>Sahra Wagenknecht<\/strong> also remained <strong>out of the hemicycle,<\/strong> having failed to win over\u00a0<strong>4.97 percent<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<h3 id='towards-a-grand-coalition'  id=\"boomdevs_2\" class=\"p1\">Towards a grand coalition?<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">With the threshold for an absolute majority in the <i>Bundestag<\/i> set at 316, Merz will need to lean on some other party to govern. Given the FDP&#8217;s ouster from the House, the distribution of seats among the five forces present means that <strong>a deal between his conservatives and the Social Democrats<\/strong>, who\u00a0have 328 deputies, should suffice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">After all, the &#8220;<strong>Grand\u00a0Coalition<\/strong>&#8221;\u00a0of Merkel&#8217;s era\u00a0was the goal of the leader of the CDU, who aimed for a two-party alliance without the need for a third party in government. His\u00a0approach has little to do with the Gr\u00fcnen on many vital issues, a factor that would have made a three-way coalition (CDU\/CSU, SPD, and Greens) somewhat problematic.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Not that it&#8217;s smooth sailing now: the future chancellor himself admitted that <strong>the new government may not take office until Easter.<\/strong>\u00a0However,\u00a0there is a lot of pressure (domestic and international) on Berlin for Germany to resume its leadership role in Europe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Some electoral trends<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Excluding Merz&#8217;s victory, however, voters punished\u00a0<strong>the mainstream parties rather severely<\/strong>. The <strong><i>Union<\/i> itself had never fallen below the psychological threshold of 30 percent<\/strong> since World War II, and during the Merkel era, the worst result was 33 percent in 2017. According to an early <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dw.com\/en\/german-election-results-and-voter-demographics-explained-in-charts\/a-71724186\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">analysis of the vote<\/a>, the Christian Democrats lost <strong>about a million voters to the AfD<\/strong>, gaining two from the SPD and one from the FDP.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">The <strong>collapse of the SPD<\/strong>, its worst result\u00a0in 76 years, is indicative of a <strong>great impatience of the electorate with the policies of the center-left led by Scholz,<\/strong>\u00a0who was\u00a0not named as the SPD&#8217;s chief negotiator for\u00a0the formation of a <i>Gro\u00dfe Koalition<\/i> with the CDU and the CSU: among the names circulating for that role are those of the outgoing Defense Minister, <strong>Boris Pistorius<\/strong>, and one of the party&#8217;s two co-leaders, <strong>Lars Klingbeil<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Even <strong>in the FDP, the shakeout was so strong<\/strong> as to expel the Liberals from the <i>Bundestag<\/i> and, consequently, force their candidate Lindner to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.eu\/article\/germany-election-friedrich-merz-cdu-olaf-scholz-spd-afd\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">retire from active politics<\/a>. As for the <strong><i>Linke<\/i><\/strong>, the <strong>hemorrhage to the BSW<\/strong> (born in the fall of 2023 with the defection of Wagenknecht) was <strong>relatively contained<\/strong> (around 350,000 votes), while there were about 1.26 million voters disappointed by the SPD and Greens who decided to put their trust in Reichinnek &amp; co. Finally, the <strong>dazzling success of the AfD<\/strong> stems mainly from the <strong>mobilization of abstainers<\/strong>: according to projections, about 2 million votes came from those\u00a0who did not go to\u00a0the polls in 2021.<\/p>\n<h3 id='the-dynamics-of-voting'  id=\"boomdevs_3\" id=\"the-dynamics-of-voting\" class=\"p1\">The dynamics of voting<\/h3>\n<p class=\"p1\">There were other interesting data concerning the <strong>vote<\/strong>\u00a0<strong>distribution by geography<\/strong> <strong>and age<\/strong>. From a territorial point of view, Germany appears for the umpteenth time <strong>split in two<\/strong>, as if it never overcame the Cold War division, even after reunification.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">At the so-called second vote (<i>Zweitstimme<\/i>) level &#8212;\u00a0<strong>the proportional one that goes to parties on a national basis &#8212;<\/strong> the <strong>CDU came first in the entire former West Germany<\/strong> (in Bavaria, the CSU holds the record). In contrast, the <strong>former communist GDR<\/strong> saw the <strong>landslide victory of the AfD<\/strong>. It is immediately striking how, compared with 2021 results,\u00a0the <strong>SPD was swept\u00a0off the electoral map.<\/strong><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_419533\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Screenshot-2025-02-24-at-10.53.07.png\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-419533 size-large entered litespeed-loaded\" src=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Screenshot-2025-02-24-at-10.53.07-1024x908.png\" alt=\"Elezioni Germania 2025\" width=\"1024\" height=\"908\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Screenshot-2025-02-24-at-10.53.07-1024x908.png 1024w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Screenshot-2025-02-24-at-10.53.07-300x266.png 300w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Screenshot-2025-02-24-at-10.53.07-768x681.png 768w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Screenshot-2025-02-24-at-10.53.07-750x665.png 750w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Screenshot-2025-02-24-at-10.53.07-1140x1011.png 1140w, https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Screenshot-2025-02-24-at-10.53.07.png 1444w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-419533\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The comparison of German election maps of 2021 and 2025 (source: Politico)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\">By age group, <strong>the CDU and the SPD did best among the over 70<\/strong>, winning\u00a042 and 25 percent support, respectively. Among those\u00a0<strong>under 25, the leading party is the Linke<\/strong> (with a quarter of the vote), while <strong>in the 25-44 bracket, the AfD won<\/strong> (23 percent among 25- to 34-year-olds and 26 percent among 35- to 44-year-olds).<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">By gender, the gap between male and female voters\u00a0was generally small (around 2-3 percentage points) for all parties except for the ultra-right. Among the female electorate, 17 percent voted AfD. In contrast, this percentage rises to 24 percent for the male voters.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Finally, the parties that fared better among <strong>the more educated segments of society<\/strong> were the <strong>Greens<\/strong> (19 percent among voters with higher education versus 4 percent among those with basic education) and the <strong>Left<\/strong> (11 percent versus 5 percent). In contrast, <strong>the AfD did better among the less educated<\/strong> (28 percent versus 13 percent).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Christian Democrats came first, albeit with one of the worst results ever, and will now have to form a government with the Social Democrats of the SPD. The ultra-right AfD overtook the SPD and became the second party, taking home a fifth of the popular vote. The Left saw a surge, the Greens fared poorly, and the Liberals did very badly. The red-brown coalition just missed entering the Bundestag.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7876,"featured_media":419512,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[25681],"tags":[26267,26471,29715,29635,26268],"class_list":["post-419537","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-alice-weidel-and","tag-election-germany-2025-en","tag-friedrich-merz-en","tag-olaf-scholz-en"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419537","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7876"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=419537"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419537\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":419565,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/419537\/revisions\/419565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/419512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=419537"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=419537"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=419537"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}