Berlin’s political mating game gets under way on Monday morning with a misleading air of cosy familiarity.
On Sunday 84 per cent of German voters, the highest turnout since the 1990 unification election, pulled the plug for good on the so-called “traffic light” coalition headed by Social Democratic (SPD) chancellor Olaf Scholz.
The unpopular 66-year-old chancellor is on his way out of politics. Yet his party, despite its worst-ever federal election result, may have another chance at power under the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU).
Its chairman, Friedrich Merz, was the beaming victor of Sunday’s election. After 36 years as a political bridesmaid, the 69-year-old is on course to become Germany’s oldest chancellor since its flinty founding father, Konrad Adenauer.
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Looking rosy-cheeked and far younger than his years, Merz appeared after polls closed to thank voters for their trust. Amid cheers and whoops, he insisted his party was “well prepared to take over government responsibility”.
“I am aware of the dimensions of the task ahead of us, and I know that it won’t be easy,” said Merz, injecting a note of realism into the party atmosphere.
Whether he succeeds or not will depend on the goodwill of his political allies and would-be coalition partners. Bavaria’s Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU’s sister party, promised firm support – but only if Merz maintained his recent pivot towards harder migration and asylum policy.
“Some in our country have begun to doubt democracy,” said Markus Söder, CSU leader and Bavarian prime minister. “We need strength and clear leadership and the one man the country expect that from is Friedrich Merz.”
It remains to be seen how the voter-whipped SPD, down nine points to finish around 16 per cent, will adapt to Merz’s leadership given the political departure of Scholz.
Looking tired, Scholz said, just as the 2021 was his victory, the 2025 defeat was his, too. As SPD officials began making plans for a post-Scholz future, they groaned at the prospect of a three-way coalition with the pro-business FDP.
Last November it walked out of Berlin’s warring coalition and is no longer on speaking terms with the SPD. Yet any new coalition’s credibility will depend on its ability to work together to tackle Germany’s flatlining economy, after a third year without growth, and broken asylum bureaucracy that has failed to follow through on deportations.
That has shattered public trust after a series of violent attacks with asylum seeker suspects, most recently on Friday night at Berlin’s Holocaust memorial. Complicated coalition talks loom as key SPD figures insisted their party would not back hardline migration measures as demanded by Merz and the CSU.
Yet early voter analysis shows the asylum/public security issue was key in a mass defection of voters from mainstream parties to Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). After 12 years, Sunday evening was the moment the AfD shook off its reputation as an eastern German regional phenomenon to become the Bundestag’s second-largest party.
Though still excluded from coalition talks, AfD co-leader Alice Weidel insisted “no political shift is possible in Germany without us”.
“In the next years we will overtake the CDU/CSU,” she said in a discussion with other leaders, dismissing its result as a “Pyrrhic victory”. Her Bundestag floor leader, Bernd Baumann, went further, predicting Merz and his CDU would seek them out after failed coalition talks to others.
“It doesn’t have to be a coalition at the start,” he said, “We can back laws the German people want.”
German political analysts suggested Sunday’s vote represented a further normalisation of the AfD that, after 12 years, has joined the champions’ league of Germany’s far-right populists.
“The narrative is always the same of a unified popular will suppressed by the elites of ‘old parties’ and ‘lying press’ along with external threats from Islam, the EU and globalisation,” said Prof Brettschneider of the University of Hohenheim. “The right-wing populists claim only they recognise this popular will and thus only they can free the people from internal and external threats.”
That much was palpable outside Berlin’s central station on Saturday as riot police prepared roadblocks for a small neo-Nazi march, and a larger antifascism counter demonstration. Waiting nearby at the pedestrian crossing, a middle-aged man in tracksuit bottoms rocked back and forth at the traffic lights, talking aloud to himself.
“It’s all shit here in the country, we need a blue wave tomorrow, we really need a blue wave,” the man said, repeating a popular online AfD mantra reflecting the party’s traditional blue colour.
Even if the “blue wave” was smaller than AfD supporters hoped, already the next poll in 2029 – and diminishing options for Germany’s political centre – looms large.
On Sunday evening in neighbouring Austria, mainstream parties appeared ready to form a new coalition government on the second attempt. That last-minute reversal of fortunes will exclude the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ) from office.
With that in mind, leading CDU officials in Berlin warned potential coalition partners of the need for serious compromise now and good governance in the years ahead. “Otherwise, in four years the fringes will be so strong they can govern,” said Carsten Linnemann, CDU general secretary, “and we don’t want that.”
