Making Sense of the German Election

The results of Germany’s Federal Elections are finally out and it’s a clear defeat for the incumbent government; the Social Democrats and Greens have suffered defeats in seats and the libertarian FDP saw a complete wipeout, as a result, the opposition parties by the likes of the CDU, AfD and Left have seen positive swings and results, with the former led by Friedrich Merz looking set to become the next Chancellor.

This was no average election however, the backlash to the Social Democrats was so severe it did not finish in first or second place for the first time in the party’s history, instead the fascist AfD reached second place thanks to its base in former East Germany, and turnout has been surprisingly high, in fact, at 82.5% this is the highest turnout since German reunification.

The main focus on the election has been on the AfD, extremist even for far-right standards, it is demoralising to see such a party reach second place, especially after exploiting a recent string of terror attacks and tragedies for votes, and even the CDU, despite being committed to European unity and support for Ukraine, shares some common ground with the AfD when it comes to restricting migration, while still not supporting mass-deportations.

Despite the results however, I don’t believe this is the disaster some see it as, on the surface this is distressing, but there is more going on under the surface and I will make my case by using official election information and this well-written and detailed Article from DW.

The first point I’d like to make relates to government formation, the AfD’s result is an achievement for the party but will amount to nothing substantial, because every single party in the oncoming parliament has refused to formally work with them, or include them in a coalition at all, even the conservative CDU.

What will happen then? A natural ally of the CDU is the FDP, however, due to the anti-government sentiment of this election, the party has been given the boot and has no representatives.

The CDU therefore is left with the Social Democrats and Greens, as the CDU has made it clear it will never collaborate with either the AfD or Left. A coalition with the Greens looks tenuous as numerous CDU figures (most notably the leader of the CDU's Bavarian partner Markus Söder) have sneered at the very concept, therefore a CDU-SPD coalition is the most likely outcome, the main condition being that outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz would not be involved in the government.

With 328 seats a Black-Red coalition would be enough for an overall majority, a Black-Green coalition is less likely given the lower amount of MPs and higher tensions between the parties.

Admittedly this sounds absurd to most people, “the CDU in coalition with the SPD? That’s like Labour forming a government with the Tories!”

While it does sound contradictory, this is nothing new; the CDU has formed governments with the SPD many many times, in fact, the SPD's very first time as part of a government was following the 1965 West German election, where after the collapse of the CDU-FDP coalition, the CDU under new leadership formed a government with the Social Democrats.

Basically: a sensible government following this election is very much possible and the AfD will likely remain a whinging opposition voice that “does nothing but waffle” as former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern would put it.

Despite some shared visions on migration, the CDU and AfD have fundamentally irreconcilable differences, the former's leader Friedrich Merz is a staunch Europeanist, Atlanticist (pro-NATO) and supporter of the "liberal order" which stands in direct friction with the AfD's Russophilic stance.

Another interesting observation comes from voter migration, basically where voters have gone since the last election if they switched allegiance, and we see some revealing data here.

Here we can see how the voter migration affected the outgoing "Traffic Light Coalition" and given the anti-government sentiment in this election, this is not surprising.

The SPD lost two million votes to the CDU, in what are likely the middle-ground swing voters that were crucial in their 2021 victory. Other significant voting groups have abandoned the centre-left for the far-left (Left Party and BSW) and far-right (AfD) only taking a negligible number of votes from the FDP.

The Greens fared slightly better, mainly losing votes to the Left Party and to a slightly lesser degree the CDU.

The FDP were the government's big losers as they lost votes left and right (literally) with right-wing parties being the main beneficiaries, even being the only party to lose non-voters.

This was all bad news for the government, so how did the opposition fare?

The CDU's figures parallel the SPD's, gaining two million voters from the latter while also gaining a significant amount of votes from fellow rightists FDP and non-voters, all factors attributing their electoral triumph. Curiously enough however, the CDU lost a million votes to the AfD, despite also being a right-wing opposition party seen as tough on migration, on that subject...

While the AfD mainly benefited from the right-leaning CDU and FDP votes as well as the left-leaning SPD votes, what I find most interesting is on the far-right (no pun intended) of this graph.

Yes, the AfD gained a whole 2 million votes from people who usually don't vote or stayed home in the last election, this is the highest amount out of any party and in terms of overall numbers.

This is significant as it all but confirms the theory that support for the AfD (and the far-right in other countries in general) does not come from "true believers" but rather from a fluctuating demographic that isn't loyal to any specific movement or is outright apolitical.

While this has served the AfD well for the short-term, the long-term prospects look uncertain. Relying on disillusioned non-voters is a gamble, and there is no guarantee that this voting bloc will vote AfD or vote at all come next election.

This was fundamentally a protest vote, and protest voters can be even more unpredictable than the swing voters that jumped ship from the SPD to the CDU.

AfD's model is unsustainable in the long term, not even being the "East Germany Party" is a safe bet as they now see competition from the BSW, which, while failing to get elected in this cycle, has already established a presence in the parliaments of some East German states, and now will have ample time to build and solidify their base.

It's in the AfD's best interest to not allow the "conservative socialists" to catch up, and early signs are already clear as the BSW is the only party to have successfully siphoned votes away from the AfD, despite the BSW not having the momentum on their side. One can only imagine how an energised and mobilised BSW could damage a more debilitated AfD.

Finally, we see the voting migration for the Left Party, and they're pretty unsurprising on the surface, likely sucking up the vote of left-leaning voters that couldn't bring themselves to vote for the government.

The Left's success, even winning a plurality of votes in the capital Berlin, is quite unexpected as it was a last-minute development, especially when considering the BSW splitting away with their firebrand leader Sarah Wagenknecht and maintaining a substantial lead over their former colleagues.

Indeed what helped the Left Party is what many are ironically attribuiting to the success of the AfD: social media. In the last few weeks of the campaign period the Left saw a sudden surge of support in the polls and membership numbers especially from young people, and a major factor to this sudden shift is a speech by prominent Left member Heidi Reichinnek going viral on platforms like TikTok, where she condemned the CDU for collaborating with the AfD in passing a homeland security resolution.

Moving on, we find voter demographics by age, and this again helps dispel a common misconception or outright disinformation, that young people are increasingly turning right or far right wing.

This is a narrative I vehemently oppose, especially by the fact that it doesn't stand up to scrutiny when confronted with evidence.

While it is true that 18-24 year-old voters had the AfD as their second choice at 21%, their number one was the Left at 25%, not just that, but when compared to other age groups it's evident that young people actually lean much more to the left than their elders; while support for the AfD is consistent among all age groups with a significant uptick among 35-44 year olds, there is a crystal clear trend of support for the Left rising the lower the age goes.

Support for the Left among the biggest AfD supporters (35-44 year-olds) sits at 8%, for 25-34 year olds it just about doubles at 15%, and with the youngest demographic it more than triples.

Rather than a sudden support for the far-right, we are seeing a rejection of both the outgoing government and of the "old guard" of German politics, being the SPD CDU and FDP, and this doesn't even consider potential overlap with non-voters which further complicates predictions.

Finally, I would like to return to one of the points brought up at the very start of this article: the turnout of this election has been extremely high, at 82.5% it's the highest turnout since 1987 (84.3%) which regardless of the result, it's good for democracy... in fact, that may be even more so if you're opposed to the far-right.

These two maps are very interesting when put next to each other, one map shows the turnout rate, the darkest constituencies show the lowest turnout, and the brighter ones have a higher turnout; the second map meanwhile shows the winning parties in by constituency.

Notice anything?

There seems to be a clear overlap with the AfD's success and lower turnout, which leads me to believe that there was a non-insignificant amount of effort by anti-AfD voters to mobilise and prevent them from winning seats which in West Germany (where this effort has been most visible) has succeeded, as the AfD has not won a single constituency seat outside of East Germany.

This shows that at least in former West Germany and in urban areas, people are aware and are doing their part in limiting the AfD's mandate, and it's evident that if they were to try anything funny, Germans will not be quiet about it.

Last year's anti-fascist protests being the biggest ones in modern German history is sound evidence that opposition to fascism is alive and louder than ever, considering that authoritarians thrive on an apathetic and inactive populace, the AfD remains cornered.