The Germans voted for a change of leadership on Sunday, putting the most votes during a parliamentary election to the centrist conservatives, with the extreme right in second position, and reprimanding the left government of the nation for its management of the ‘Economy and immigration.
Early returns and exit polls certainly mean that the next Chancellor of the country will be Friedrich Merz, head of Christian Democrats. But he will need at least one or – in a possibility that the Germans hoped to avoid – two coalition partners to govern.
“We won it,” Merz told Berlin supporters on Sunday evening, promising to quickly form a parliamentary majority to govern the country and restore strong German leaders in Europe.
The election, which was held seven months before the date scheduled after the collapse of the unpopular and long-turn coalition of the Chancellor, will now become an essential element of the European response to the new World Order of President Trump. He attracted what seemed to be the highest participation rate for decades.
Mr. Merz, 69, promised to repress migrants and reduced taxes and commercial regulations in order to launch economic growth. He also promised to provide a more assertive foreign policy to help Ukraine and stronger leadership in Europe at a time when the new Trump administration sowed anxiety by blurring traditional alliances and kissing Russia.
Mr. Merz, a businessman, was once considered a potentially better partner for Mr. Trump, but in the last days of the campaign, he thought about the question of whether the United States would remain a democracy under M . He firmly condemned what the Germans considered the interference by the officials of the Trump administration in the name of the extreme right alternative for Germany, or AFD.
“My absolute priority, for me, will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that we can gradually obtain real independence from the United States,” said Merz in a TV round table after the surveys are closed. “I would never have thought of saying something like that on television, but after the comments last week of Donald Trump, it is clear that this administration is largely indifferent to the fate of Europe, or at least to this part . “
The first wave of returns and exit polls suggested that its Christian Democrats and their sister party, the Christian social union, would win 29% of the votes combined. It was a part of a short share for the best party during a German election, and the second lower for Mr. Merz’s party during a chancellor election.
Both are signs of Multiply cracks in the national policy and the weaknesses of traditional centrist parties that have governed Germany for decades.
Sunday evening, there was a great suspense about the coalition that Mr. Merz could meet, but he clearly hoped for a revival of the centrist governments which led Germany for a large part of the mandate of the former Chancellor Angela Merkel: Christian Democrats in the main role, with Social Democrats as a solitary junior partner.
It was not clear if it would be possible. Two parties oscillated around the 5% of the support necessary to enter Parliament: the free-enterprise free democrats and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, which is a pro-Russia Splinder of the former German left. If the two lost the 5%threshold, Mr. Merz could be forced to a more difficult three -dimensional coalition, unable to form a majority with a single partner.
This could mean the repetition of a potentially heavy and unstable government for Germany, reconfigured but with some of the same vulnerabilities as that which has recently collapsed.
The complication occurs because Mr. Merz has never promised to join second place, AFD, which flirts regularly with Nazi slogans and whose members have decreased the holocaust and were linked to plots to overturn the government. But yields have shown that AFD is an increasing force in German politics, even if it has not succeeded in its ambitions in this election.
AFD has almost doubled its share of vote four years ago, largely by calling on the voters upset by the millions of refugees who have entered the country in the last decade of the Middle East, of Afghanistan, from Ukraine and elsewhere.
However, his share of voting seems to not be his support in the polls a year ago. Many analysts expected a stronger demonstration, after a sequence of events that raised the party and its migration problem.
AFD has received public support from Vice-President JD Vance and billionaire Trump Elon Musk. He sought to make political gains from a series of fatal attacks committed by migrants in recent months, especially in the last days of the campaign.
But this boon has never materialized for AFD or for Mr. Merz, who led his party to the right on migration in order to cut a flow of voters to AFD. The reaction to recent attacks and the support of Trump officials may even have mobilized a late support for Die Linke, the far left party of Germany, which campaigned on a platform of Pro-immigration immigration suggested voters in interviews on Sunday.
For all this movement, the most likely coalition partner for Mr. Merz seems to be the only analyst predicted for months: the social democrats of the center-left of Mr. Scholz, even if they have experienced a sharp drop in support Four years ago.
The other possible partners include the Greens, who seemed to be ready for the fourth place in the vote. Negotiations with possible partners started shortly after closing the surveys on Sunday.
Interviews and the first yields suggested that voters were angry with Mr. Scholz’s government at high prices for grocery store and inadequate wage growth.
Many voters, even those who supported Christian Democrats, said they were not enthusiastic about Mr. Merz personally. But they hoped that he could forge a strong government to solve problems in the country and abroad and to keep Germany at a distance.
“The greatest risk for Germany at the moment is that we will have an unstable majority,” said Felix Saalfeld, a 32 -year -old doctor in the eastern city of Dresden, who voted for the Christian Democrats of Mr. Merz. “This is why it is preferable that the CDU / CSU gets a lot of votes and that we can somehow form a coalition with as little people as possible, even if it is not my party.”
Mr. Merz will probably face an intimidating task by trying to invigorate an economy that has not grown up, in real terms, for half a decade. He will also seek to lead Europe in commercial and security conflicts with Mr. Trump and an American administration which quickly reworked its world alliances. Voters said they were turning to the next government to cushion the pain in post-payic inflation.
“Everything becomes more expensive, and at the same time, wages do not increase,” said Rojin Yilmaz, 20, trainee in Allianz in Aschaffenburg, a city where an immigrant with mental illness has killed a toddler and a Adult in January. Mr. Yilmaz voted for Die Linke.
In interviews in Dresden, a bastion of AFD support, some voters said they had lost confidence in other parties to resolve immigration and other questions.
“I voted for AFD,” said Andreas Mühlbach, 70. “It is the only alternative that is able to change things here.”
With the support of AFD on the rise, Martin Milner, 59, educator and musician of Potsdam who divided his ticket between the Greens and Die Linke, said that he hoped that German defensive democracy is quickly against the threat right.
“I hope this system will be sufficiently resilient,” said Mr. Milner, “that she can manage the problems we have without deriving to an extreme or the other.”
The reports were brought by Christopher F. Schuetze,, Melissa Eddy And Tatiana First from Berlin; Sam Gurwitt d’Aschaffenburg; Adam Sella de Potsdam; And Catherine Odom of Dresden.
