The German establishment’s desperate stitch-up

Germany’s establishment parties were given a beating in this weekend’s federal elections.

Friedrich Merz and his conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) may have come out on top. But they did so on just 28.5 per cent of the vote. This is the CDU’s second-worst result ever. Its worst result was at the 2021 election, when it picked up just 24 per cent of the vote.

Voters directed most of their anger at the governing coalition parties. Support for Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) plunged to a historic low, to just 16.4 per cent, a fall of 9.3 percentage points from its 2021 result. The Liberals’ vote fell by seven per cent to just 4.3 per cent, which means they won’t even be represented in the new parliament. The Greens, meanwhile, picked up just 11.6 per cent of the vote, a fall of 3.1 per cent from 2021.

The electorate has certainly been energised. Fuelled by populist sentiment and anti-establishment anger, voter turnout was back above 80 per cent, its highest level since 1990. The right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) won 20.8 per cent, doubling its vote share from 2021, while the Left Party was up 3.9 per cent, picking up 8.8 per cent of the vote. The left-populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which was only founded a year ago, won just under five per cent of the vote.

The CDU’s triumph cannot disguise the fact that the old parties seem to be dying a slow death. Young voters in particular are turning their backs on the political establishment. A quarter of under-25s voted for the Left Party, the successor to the socialists who ruled over the old East Germany, while just over 20 per cent opted for the AfD. The Greens came in a distant third among the under-25s, with 10 per cent. Among 25- to 34-year-olds, 24 per cent voted for the AfD, followed by the CDU with 17 per cent and the Left Party with 16 per cent.

Merz will certainly be the next chancellor. But like Scholz before him, he begins with low approval ratings. He has also maintained his commitment to maintaining the political ‘firewall’ against the AfD. This is where the main parties refuse to work with the populists under any circumstances, even just to pass votes in the Bundestag.

The exclusion of the second-largest party in Germany will make many of those who voted for it feel even more marginalised than they already do. After all, the huge numbers of people voting for the AfD did so not because they have ‘far right’ views, but because the party gave their concerns about immigration and the economy a public airing.

Parties have every right to choose who they go into government with, but having ruled out any cooperation with the AfD in advance, Merz has limited himself to working with precisely those parties voters have just rejected at the ballot box. The CDU can either partner with the badly bruised SPD, or form an even broader alliance including both the SPD and the Greens. The most probable outcome, a CDU-SPD coalition, would unite two parties that are in clear decline, with both scoring their worst or second-worst results ever.

Merz has tried to appeal to those voters disillusioned with the political establishment. Just before the election, he railed against the outgoing government’s preoccupation with pleasing ‘green and left nutters’. He promised to refocus politics on the majority’s concerns. To this end, he has pledged to solve the migration crisis through faster deportations and border controls; to potentially revive nuclear power by reviewing recent reactor closures; and to reverse Germany’s economic stagnation and industrial decline.

Yet these promises ring hollow. Merz’s likely coalition partners in the SPD show no appetite for change. What’s more, many of Germany’s current problems – from the nuclear phase-out to out-of-control illegal migration – took root during the CDU’s 16 years in power. Merz can make bold promises. But they’re undermined by his choice of coalition partner and his party’s own recent history.

Ultimately, any coalition government united solely by its desire to exclude populist parties is destined to fail. It will validate the growing belief among voters that meaningful change can only come from outside the established political system. If Merz truly intends to lead Germany through its current challenges, he will need to do more than bolster the status quo. And that will take precisely what he and his party lack – political courage.

Sabine Beppler-Spahl is spiked’s Germany correspondent.