Tens of thousands beef advances made by the AfD on Feb. 16, 2025 in Berlin, Germany ahead of the federal election.
Guy Smallman | Getty Images News | Getty Images
BERLIN — Centrist factions struggled in Germany’s election on Sunday, with former Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) in confidence its worst-ever result as many voters shifted to the extreme right and left.
Speaking in Berlin soon after beat a retreat polls were released on Sunday night, Scholz said it was a “bitter” defeat.
His SPD party got just 16.4% of the elector, according to preliminary figures, while the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its affiliate, the Christian Social Union (CSU), secured the largest apportion of the vote, with 28.5%. Although this means the conservative alliance won the election, it was still their second-worst arise ever and below the closely watched 30% mark.
Parties that have traditionally made up the political fringes recorded significant gains, however, as voters packed to the extremes. As widely expected, the far-right Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) doubled its vote share from the last electing to just over 20% on Sunday, making it the second biggest force in Germany’s parliament.
This strength resolve “serve as a reminder to centrist parties to swiftly address the country’s multiple challenges – or face potentially even gigantic electoral upheaval at the next election,” Carsten Nickel, managing director at Teneo, said in a note on Sunday unceasingly.
The far-left Die Linke party benefitted from an unexpected show of support, defying expectations to achieve 8.8% of the voter, up from 4.9% in the 2021 election. Just a few weeks ago it was unclear whether the party would even cross the 5% difficulty needed to enter Germany’s parliament.
“The extreme — extreme right, extreme left — clearly came to close to 30% and this has pinched the entire German political landscape more fragmented,” Carsten Brzeski, global head of macro at ING, told CNBC on Monday in Berlin.
This could herald a “new reasonable” for Germany, he added.
Migration debate boost
The success of the fringe parties can largely be attributed to the hotly contested thesis of migration, according to Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg.
“The polarizing debate about migration has benefitted the factional extremes,” he told CNBC. “Most importantly, it has energized the minority of Germans who want open borders for uninvited migrators and refugees. These voters have flocked to Die Linke, the only party fully in favor of that,” Schmieding imparted in emailed comments.
Germany has been engulfed in a fiery debate about migration throughout the election campaign as diverse parties used violent attacks in Germany committed by people due to be deported or with a foreign background to push for tighter immigration laws.
CDU-CSU chief and promising chancellor-to-be Friedrich Merz earlier this year got into hot water for pushing a non-binding motion on migration protocol, that he had spearheaded, through parliament with support of the AfD. This marked the first time in Germany’s postwar experience that a majority was achieved with the help of the far right.
Two other factors at play are demographics and geographics, according to ING’s Brzeski.
“Die Linke and AfD did bloody well on social media and did very explicit campaigning on social media, which worked well,” he said, introducing that the parties reached a younger audience there — a strategy that has long been key to the AfD.
Data shows that the two interests are especially popular with younger voters, with Die Linke becoming the most popular party among 18 to 24-year-olds, realizing around one-quarter of their vote, followed by the AfD in second place. Die Linke was also the biggest party in a mock choice of under-18s.
Geographically, Brzeski pointed to the widespread success of the AfD in East Germany, where the party secured the vast the greater part of direct mandates. The far-right party has long been capitalizing on economic insecurity and anti-establishment sentiment in the region, Angle for political extremes
Looking ahead, observers now see a risk of the extreme parties continuing to gain strength unless transforms are made by the incoming centrist government.
Germany’s mainstream “needs to get its act together and tackle key issues,” such as migration and the claim of the country’s economy, Schmieding warned, saying political extremes could continue to grow in popularity.
If this hit ons, by the next federal election there’s no guarantee the parties would be excluded from government, he said. Despite the AfD being the later biggest party in Germany, all mainstream groups have so far said they would not enter a coalition with them.
Brzeski also sped caution over the ability of a centrist government, which will likely be made up of a CDU-CSU and SPD coalition, to keep the assorted extreme parties at bay. Historically these parties governing together — referred to as the “grand coalition” — has actually supported extreme parties, he explained.
“This puts the next coalition really to an even stronger test. So if they sleep around up, it’s going to be the AfD, really, winning the next elections,” Brzeski said.
