Germany’s election
Looking down on the Bundestag
The outcome and what it means for other democracies
The outcome was much as predicted, but although the media call it a swing to the right, it’s hard to summarize it in right-left terms because there was also a general turning away from the major parties, particularly by young voters, according to media commentators. The Christian Democrats’ success is mainly due to the collapse of another centre-right party. It may be better to describe the outcome as a swing towards populists on the extremes of the political spectrum.
One clear revelation is that Germany’s east-west divide is still strong. It’s as if, after much hoopla and celebration in 1989, and a surge of generosity in terms of infrastructure investment funded by the west, the east has been left to languish, and they are taking it out by voting for the far-right and communists – anyone but the traditional parties. In the west the social democrats have lost badly to the centre-right Christian Democrats, while another party on the centre-right has been wiped off the electoral landscape.
The figures and a “who’s who”
A point that can be made with some certainty is that Germans were highly engaged with this election. Turnout was 83 percent, up from 77 percent in the 2021 election.
As predicted, the next Chancellor will be Friedrich Merz, chair of the centre-right Christian Democrat Union (Christlich Demokratische Union Deutschlands – CDU), a party in tight coalition with the Bavarian Christian Social Union (Christlich-Soziale Union in Bayern – CSU), similar in organization to our Liberal-National Party coalition, but ideologically more centrist than our Coalition has become. The CDU/CSU won 28.5 percent of the vote, a gain of 4.4 percent.
Also as predicted, the far-right Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland – AfD) did well, winning 20.8 percent of the vote, doubling its support since the 2021 election. That surge has captured most media attention.
That means, in terms of the number of seats they have won, the CDU/CSU and AfD could probably form a governing coalition between them, but the traditional German parties, in an agreement among themselves, have constructed a Brandmauer – a firewall – ruling out any deals with the far right. Memories of 1933 to 1945 run deep. Merz also sees the Brandmauer as an agreement to keep the far left out of any coalition.
So the next group are the Social Democrats (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands – SPD) – think of our Labor Party. It won 16.4 percent of the vote, down 9.3 percent from its vote in 2021.
The SPD was once the dominant party in German politics. In 2021 the CDU/CSU and the SPD were both polling at about 25 percent, but since then the CDU/CSU support has risen by about 5 percent, while the CDU support has fallen by about 10 percent. This is part of a general pattern in democracies of waning support for established centre-left parties.
Then there are the Greens (die Grünen)– think of our Greens, but with the maturity of having held ministerial positions, and without the tendency to align with the far right to block legislation. Their vote is down by 3.1 percent to 11.6 percent. Exit polls suggest that they did very well among young voters.
Then come the real losers, the Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei – FDP), a party with a neoliberal agenda, and a touch of libertarianism. Their vote fell from 11.4 percent to 4.3 percent, and under Germany’s 5 percent threshold for holding seats, they are excluded from parliamentary representation. They had been in Olaf Scholtz’s “Traffic light” (Straßenampel) red, orange, green SPD/FDP/Green coalition.
This election was necessitated because of the FDP’s hard line on the federal budget: in Germany, as in other democracies, defeat of a budget means defeat of a government. The general interpretation of their defeat is that voters have punished them for causing political instability, rather than because of any rejection of their platform. Their supporters have probably gone to the CDU/CSU.
There are two other parties whose roots are in the old East German Communist Party. These are the Left (die Linke) and another nominally “left” gathering called the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknech – BSW, or the Sahra Wagenknecht Allianz – SWA. The former are pretty well in line with traditional Marxist-Leninist values, but the BSW is a culturally conservative anti-American, pro-Russian gathering. Between them they got 13.1 percent of the vote, mainly from young people according to exit polls.
General patterns – Germany’s old east-west divide and a swing towards the political fringes
The main feature of this election is the enduring significance of the old east-west division. Reunification was 35 years ago, but the division is still evident. In fact it goes back a long way, well before the days of the communist Deutsche Demokratische Republik (DDR). The east is poorer than the west, is less cosmopolitan than the west, and among some older east Germans there is still a yearning for the certainty and security of the old communist system. Competitive markets, capitalism and immigration all came to the east as a series of shocks. It’s as if the transition that came to the west in 1945 were delayed by 44 years.
Reuters has an informative website – Live German election results – with maps showing the geographical distribution of votes and movements in voting. The AfD did well in the east (with the exception of Berlin). So too did the Left and the SWA, the remnants of the DDR government. The CDU did well in Bavaria, and the SPD did relatively well in Nordrhein-Wastfalen, which includes Germany’s traditional industrial heartland. Within Nordrhein-Wastfalen lies the Ruhr region, once the centre of Germany’s coal and steel industries. There was high support for the AfD in the Ruhr and other regions that have been subject to economic dislocation in past times.
That same Reuters website has an estimate of the distribution of seats. Germany’s electoral system (borrowed by New Zealand) is a hybrid of first-past-the-post and proportional representation, which elects representatives for a single chamber, the Bundestag. (There is a separate chamber, the Bundesrat, a states’ house with members appointed by the states (Länder), but it has much less power than our Senate.)
There will be 630 seats in the Bundestag . It is almost certain that there will be a CDU/CSU – SPD Coalition (think of a coalition between Turnbull’s moderates and the Labor party), but that will get them only up to 328 seats – just clear of a 315-seat majority. For an assured majority the Greens could be brought into a coalition, but that is probably not necessary, because it is hard to imagine the Greens aligning with the AfD to deny confidence or supply.
Interpretation
So much for the numbers. There will be considered analysis over the next few months. The ABC’s Ahmed Yusuf has a broad political analysis: What the far right's biggest win since WWII means for Germany's 'firewall'. Matt Fitzpatrick of Flinders University has been quick to contribute a Conversation article, describing Merz’s immediate challenges: Friedrich Merz has won Germany’s election. But as the far right soars, forming a government may be difficult. Fitzpatrick does not rule out a CDU/CSU coalition with the AfD, noting that if Merz did “he may very well become Germany’s 21st century Franz von Papen, the Weimar Republic-era leader widely viewed as having helped usher the Nazis to power in the 1930s”. That’s probably not going to happen. Perhaps, as an Australian, Fitzpatrick is too used to our main party on the right abandoning all moral principles to gain support from the far right.
On Radio National Breakfast is an interview with Stefan Marschall of Heinrich-Heine University in Düsseldorf. He believes that immigration is the main factor that has pushed the electorate to the right, noting that anti-immigration feelings have been heightened by recent terrorist attacks. (6 minutes)
Foreign Affairs has a short article by Liana Fix and Peter Sparding, In Germany, the Center can hold, stressing that the preference of the German people is for a CDU/CSU – SPD coalition.
Some other commentary is to be found on Deutsche Welle’s website of links to analysis and opinion articles. There will surely be much more in coming days.
What it may mean for Australia
Many on the right will say it’s a confirmation of a worldwide swing to the right, which will be manifest in Australia.
As two of the world’s strongest democracies, there are many similarities between Australia and Germany, but there are at least two ways in which our political landscape is very different from Germany’s. First are its high regional disparities, particularly between the west and east. Second is immigration. It surged after 2010, and it has been from a concentration of countries in the Middle East, rather than from a variety of countries as is the case for Australia. Also there have been some high-profile crimes, classified as terrorist attacks, committed by or attributed to migrants.
Germany’s economy has had the same post-Covid struggle as ours. They have had a fall in GDP. Our GDP has kept in positive territory (just), but in terms of people’s experience a real recession as Germany has experienced is no different from a per-capita recession as we have experienced.
It is notable that concerns from many years past, which seemed to have been dealt with at the time, such as integration of the DDR and deindustrialization of the Ruhr, are still live issues. There is a lesson here for a country that is going through an energy transition.
The other lesson is less about specific policies and more about political structures and norms. Merz may be well on the right in his economic and social attitudes (see the next segment), but his government’s policies will be shaped by the need to form a coalition with the SPD, and by the continued presence in his own party of those who supported Merkel’s centrist orientation.
Perhaps a German observer, looking at Australia’s political landscape, noting the low support for our old political parties and a general preference in the population for centrist policies, would see a Coalition-Labor coalition as a likely outcome of our coming election.
The improbability of such an outcome is a sad reflection of the damage done to our political system by political thugs, mainly but not only in the Coalition ranks, and the partisan Murdoch media.
Who is Friedrich Merz?
The German Chancellor does not have the executive reach enjoyed (or assumed) by the US President, and generally has to rule in a coalition. Nevertheless, as we have seen with Angela Merkel, the Chancellor does put a personal stamp on the office.
The Guardian’s Kate Connolly has a short biography Who is Friedrich Merz and what’s in his in-tray? He is an economic conservative. But a period of economic austerity that has seen Germany’s once high-quality infrastructure fall behind, and the US effective abandonment of NATO, puts Germany under immense pressure to lift defence spending and to repair its publicly-funded infrastructure.
Deutsche Welle’s Christoph Strack has an article Who is Friedrich Merz, Germany's likely next chancellor?with some biographical details. He’s a lawyer, a businessperson and a Catholic. He has held some strongly conservative views on abortion and related matters. Australians may see some of his views on immigration as assimilationist or even racist, but they need to be seen in the German context. Germany would be better described as “bicultural” rather than “multicultural”. Of more concern is that he has publicly criticized those who took part in pre-election demonstrations against far-right extremism, and has generally spoken against the “left” in some of the same tones as used by American Republicans.
But that doesn’t mean he is ready to support the AfD. As Hans Pfeifer pointed out last year, writing in Deutsche Welle, the AfD and the BSW are Russia’s best friends in Germany. Connolly points out that Merz has fervently backed German support for Ukraine, and that “he would like to go even further by providing Ukraine with long-range Taurus cruise missiles”.
Ed Turner of Aston University, UK, writing in The Conversation lists eight things we need to know about Merz. He notes that he’s taking the party further right – away from where Merkel had placed it, that he’s an economic liberal, with a deregulationist bent and a belief in more targeted welfare, and that he’s a social conservative, and a believer in Leitkultur – an idea of a national culture, in contrast to multiculturalism.
He favours strong relations between Germany and the US. That’s been a long-standing alliance, but following the election of Trump he is seeking to achieve more independence from the US. He’s pro-European, and is determined that Germany, along with other European NATO members, helps Ukraine.