This blog contains a series of posts about the election to Germany’s parliament (the Bundestag) on 23 February 2025. Originally published between January and May 2025, the posts offer a record of what seemed important at the time.
The election was triggered by the collapse of the three-party coalition that had governed Germany since 2021. The collapse happened some six months before the end of the Bundestag’s normal four-year term. It followed the sacking of the Finance Minister, Christian Lindner, by the Chancellor, Olaf Scholz. Lindner was leader of the Free Democrats (FDP).
On his sacking, in November 2024, the FDP left the government, reducing the governing coalition from three parties to two. This two-party coalition of Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) and the Green party thereby became a minority administration. This made an early general election inevitable.
The Zeitenwende – or a changing of the times
The election is a crucial moment in German politics. Three days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Scholz told the Bundestag that the event marked a “Zeitenwende”. But times don’t change overnight; nor do they do so smoothly.
This election is itself is a phase of the Zeitenwende, a phase marked by opposition. That includes opposition to Germany’s role in the war and to the welcome and support offered to Ukrainian and other refugees. It is also includes opposition to policies adopted to speed up Germany’s shift to a low-carbon society. The election will show the popular strength of that opposition. The new government will show how its leaders propose to resolve the conflicts that such opposition has created.
The context in which Germany makes those choices is specific to the country itself. But the matters about which it must choose are common across Europe. The choices it makes cannot but have far-reaching consequences.
On the road to a new German government, the election itself is only halfway
British political reflexes are not well suited to understanding a German election. It is not just that elections are conducted under proportional representation but that the practice of German politics is dominated by a culture of coalition. Every German government since the foundation of the Federal Republic in 1949 has been a coalition.
An outlook conditioned by first-past-the-post and a political culture of winner-take-all risks two mistakes when looking at Germany. One is to treat the election as the climax of the process. The other is to focus too much on which party is going to “win”. British reports about three state parliamentary elections, in the east of Germany in September 2024, made both mistakes.
News coverage in the run-up to them focused on whether the far-right Alliance for Germany (AfD) would be the winner. In two states, the AfD came second, to the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) in Saxony and the centre-left SPD in Brandenburg. In Thuringia by contrast, the AfD won by a wide margin, gaining more than a third of the parliamentary seats.
The AfD’s win was a big shock. Yet when a new coalition government took office three months later, the AfD wasn’t part of it.
The time it took the second-placed CDU to lead negotiations to form that government was nothing out of the ordinary. Rather, what it highlights is that on the road to any new German government, the election itself is only halfway.
1) In Thuringia: from election to government
This first post discusses the election to Thuringia’s state parliament and the subsequent negotiations which culminated in a new coalition government led by the CDU. Three things of wider importance emerge from this discussion.
The first is how a German parliamentary election works and how the subsequent negotiations to form a coalition proceed. Before a new government can take office, it must command the support of an absolute majority of members of parliament.
The second is how the agreement among the other parties to shun the AfD becomes so problematic once the AfD gets this large.
The third is how the populist threat lies not only in the numbers but also in the temptation to centrist parties to adopt a populist outlook themselves. In Thuringia, centrist parties were guilty of nothing more than accommodating a one-sided view of the Ukraine war as the price of enticing a populist party to join a coalition. But yielding once on the grounds of expediency prepares the way for yielding again.
2) Coalitions not winners: in Berlin, will Black-Red have the numbers?
“Who’s going to win?” is the most important question in first-past-the post election because the winning party can usually form a new government on its own.
In Germany’s proportional electoral system, by contrast, the connection between the election result and the new government is more tenuous. Although convention grants the winning party the right to try to form a new government, it has to find a coalition partner. The most important question to ask of a German election is: which coalitions does it make possible?
Since any party in the Bundestag could be part of a coalition, the smaller parties’ vote shares matter too.
This post considers how things stand at the mid-point in the election campaign. At present, the government that looks most likely to emerge is a coalition of the centre-right Union (CDU/CSU) and the centre-left SPD. Unthinkable in Britain, such a government in Germany would signify nothing more than a return of the “Grand” coalition that has ruled the country for 12 of the past 20 years.
As the opinion polls stand, this still uncertain outcome would be made more likely were the smaller parties to fall short of what they need to enter the Bundestag. There’s an irony here – a less representative parliament delivers a stronger government – and a danger, since what’s good for Black-Red is good for the AfD too.
3) After Aschaffenburg: Bundestag debates “effective action”
The terror attack in Aschaffenburg on 22 January that left a child and man dead has jolted the election campaign into life in the worst possible way.
Since the Bundestag sits through and even beyond an election campaign, the CDU/CSU (Union) leader Friedrich Merz was able to initiate a parliamentary debate a few days later on what would constitute effective action to prevent such attacks. Drawing on the official record, this post sets out the Union case on the one side (“tougher laws”) and the minority Red-Green government case on the other (“better enforcement”).
Yet in making his case, Merz adopted the outlook of, and drew upon the language used by, the AfD. To succeed, the motion for debate would also likely rely on the support of the AfD. This would breach the firewall.
4) After Aschaffenburg: wider political consequences
The Bundestag debate at the end of January after the terror attack in Aschaffenburg that took two people’s lives shocked Germany’s centrist parties. The motions for debate tabled by the Union breached the firewall placed around the AfD. This post discusses how this split the FDP and forced the SPD and Greens to choose between continuing to espouse a belief in a common ground between centre-left and centre-right – or abandoning it. A speech by one of the leaders of the leftwing Die Linke may have altered the outcome of the election.
5) A bad result for the centre parties doesn’t make it a good result for the AfD
Germany’s general election is not just a bad result for the centre-left SPD, its support down by a third at an all-time low. It’s also a bad result for the centre-right Union, which lost support during the election campaign. The Union’s gamble on pitching its tent on AfD ground did not bring the electoral dividend it hoped for.
But a bad result for the centre parties was not that good a result for the AfD either. Although the AfD is the largest opposition party, two other parties to the left are together numerically as strong.
The danger is that the AfD’s prominence allows strengthens the myth of the AfD’s “irresistible rise”. By offering a fuller reading of the election result, this post shows that impression to be wrong.
What is undeniable, however, is quite how numerically weak the likely new Black-Red coalition will be. Unlike 2013, this is no “grand” coalition of the two biggest parties dominating the Bundestag. Had the BSW got just 13,000 votes more, it would have crossed the 5% hurdle needed to enter the Bundestag. Had it done so, a two-arty Black-Red coalition would not have had a majority.
6) On the border: migrants can cross both ways
Born in Berlin, Walter Benjamin committed suicide in the Spanish border town of Portbou in September 1940, fleeing – or as he feared, failing to flee – the Nazis.
His memorial is not the only one to refugees in the town. 18 months earlier, Portbou was witness to Spanish Republicans fleeing north into France following the fall of Barcelona in 1939.
Migration was the dominant issue of the Bundestag election. This post offers a view from afar.
7) Germany has released its debt brake – but at what political cost?
Less than four weeks after voters chose a new Bundestag, the likely future Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, persuaded the old Bundestag to relax the constitutional limits on how much the government is allowed to borrow. Although a court challenge to the constitutional amendment failed, what is constitutionally proper may nevertheless not be politically wise.
In bringing forward the amendments, Merz stands accused of going back on his word, of treating the voters’ verdict with disdain and of making concessions to the Greens which are somehow supposed to mean that nothing has really changed.
Drawing upon the record of the parliamentary debate, this post sets out the claims and counter-claims made.
8) Wind the clock back to 2015? How the coalition agreement reveals the Union’s priorities
A coalition agreement between the leaders of centre-right Union (CDU and CSU) and the centre-left SPD opens the way for a new German government to take office, led by Friedrich Merz. This is likely to happen in early May, once the three parties themselves (CDU, CSU, SPD) have approved it. This post discusses the agreement and what it reveals of the parties’ priorities.
The last 36 lines of the agreement, setting out how the cabinet seats will be allocated between the parties, is the most important. There are two reasons why this allocation is so important.
First, it shows that ambiguities and unresolved differences over policy are seen as less important than being able to exercise the administrative power that comes from heading the department responsible.
Second, it shows the overwhelming importance both Union parties attach to migration and the departments responsible for controlling it.
9) In Thuringia: public disenchantment with federal politics did not begin in 2015
The day when Friedrich Merz’s election to the Chancellorship – at the second attempt – brought Germany’s new government into being, is a good moment to ask whether the centrist politicians have grasped how deep a challenge they now face.
In prioritising the control of migration above all else, Merz and the centre-right believe their greatest challenge dates from 2015. This was when then Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed that Germany should admit a million refugees from the war in Syria.
This post discusses a political statistic about Thuringia, dating back 35 years, which suggests this view may be too narrow. The statistic measures public support in Thuringia for the four parties that have monopolised federal governments since the 1960s. Each time this statistic has moved, it has done so in the same direction.
Thuringia, one of the six states that used to be part of East Germany, isn’t large and may not be typical. But it can claim to have been on Germany’s leading edge in matters religious, cultural and political across the centuries.
If disenchantment with the federal four runs as deep as this statistic suggests, it raises doubts about the new government’s prospects, even before it has begun.
10) What will success look like? The government’s narrative and its flaws
What story is Germany’s new government going to tell its citizens to persuade them that what it is doing can be seen as success? In his first address to the Bundestag as Chancellor, on 14 May, Friedrich Merz offered the start of an answer. Drawing on the parliamentary record, this post summarises and assesses what the new Chancellor had to say.
Merz’s address covered defence, the economy, security and migration. The tone of each was different, “statesmanlike” – say – on defence, “subtle” on the economy, “reassuring” on security, “emotional” on migration. Although it was never mentioned, it is possible to detect the lines of an argument to be used against the AfD.
Yet the coalition itself is numerically weak and the parties within it divided. The emotional narrative around migration offers no sense of what success would look like. This leaves the AfD always free to demand more. And time is short. Crucial state level elections take place in 2026, while the election in early 2027 in Germany largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia, may be decisive.
11) Postscript: local elections in NRW show the centrist tradition now depends on the Greens
To follow