The CDU/CSU has recently won the German general election in the worst way possible. In fact, it is so bad, the country may be faced with a lack of government and Friedrich Merz may never even serve as a chancellor. By and large, there have been no winners in this election – bar one.
The results of the snap general election in Germany redefine irony. After confronting and taking on Russia three years ago, Germany has eventually lost economically, politically and otherwise. Subsequently, the first-ever electoral contest of the new Cold War has seen the defeat of all the political forces on the ballot, save for those who were advocating for the past success, past as in ‘East Germany and East Berlin’. The electoral map almost reproduced the geography of an era that witness a divided Germany, the USSR and the Warsaw Pact.
The east German constituencies have been swept by AfD, a sworn enemy of the traditional elites, globalists, the Brussels-headquartered bureaucracy, immigration and anti-Russian firebrands. The only exception is East Berlin that has been carried by the Left Party whose lineage dates back to East Germany’s ruling party and Comrade Erich Honecker’s legacy.
Shortly after the Left Party fell short of the 5% cutoff in the previous campaign, they were no longer deemed a force to be reckoned with. Worse yet, the organisation was then split by Sahra Wagenknecht’s bid to found her own party, which was supposed to consign Honecker’s ill-starred successors to the dumpster of history. But this time the Left Party has staged a sensational comeback to rack up 8.8.% of the vote vs 4.972% scored by the Sarah Wagenknecht Alliance.
The Left’s revival was due, among other things, to a broad online campaign targeting the younger demographic. Wagenknecht’s crushing defeat, on the other hand, came on the heels of the voters’ disappointment. Her party had joined the ruling coalition in the regional parliaments, only to fail to move the needle. The policies remained the same, while the Alliance lost its image as a fresh-faced anti-establishment hopeful.
The only silver lining for Sahra Wagenknecht may have been the upset outcome for everyone but the Left. Paradoxically, the pool of losers includes even the formal election winner, the CDU/CSU, Angela Merkel’s former party led by her erstwhile archenemy Friedrich Merz.
In a stunning turn of events, the conservatives have only gained 28.5% of the vote.
Back on Merkel’s watch, the party repeatedly surpassed the psychological threshold of 30%. Moreover, in her prime, Merkel oversaw a resounding score of more than 40%. It was during that period that Merz was effectively kicked off the country’s political scene as he lost out to Merkel for the party leadership. In fact, the two never stopped beefing.
Merz could only unretire to politics and eventually take over the party after Merkel had called it a career. In this recent campaign, his party was facing exceptionally favourable odds propped up by the unpopular government, the slumping manufacturing industry and standard of living, the immigration crisis (Merz slammed the uncontrolled flow of migrants) and the people turning on Merkel. He had everything coming his way, and yet, he only eked out a meagre 28.5%.
Another formal success has been enjoyed by the AfD, the election’s runner-up at an impressive 20.8% of the vote, twice their previous electoral haul and an all-time high for the party. Notably, polls had them at several percentage points lower, but that is where the ‘shy voter’ effect kicked in. The Germans were being intensely indoctrinated on the party’s obnoxious and fascist ideology, and so, many people could not admit they were going to vote for the ‘pariahs’. The same effect was in play when Donald Trump won the presidency stateside.
Nonetheless many people who wanted a fundamental change for Germany and put their faith in the AfD view the result as a bummer. The hope was that there would be way more ‘shy voters’ so that they could help paralyse Germany’s current political system, if not come out on top at the polls. Yet they didn’t, even though the vilified party could milk the same woes and take advantage of Merz being a weak contender for the country’s top political role.
Friedrich Merz is an extremely boring man who is prone to an occasional foolish statement he utters whenever he wants to come across as a strong leader. In one of his latest rants, he vowed to be blackmailing the Russian government by supplying the Taurus long-range missiles to the Ukrainian army. For all of his obsequiousness towards Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine, even Olaf Scholz denounced that policy as a dangerous escalatory move, a stance Angela Merkel subscribed to as well.
Merz’s path to the chancellery will depend on his ability to team up with the third-placed SPD (16.4%) and forge a ruling coalition that could be named after Merkel or maybe Berlin (these two parties have joined forces in the capital city parliament).
Scholz previously said he could only serve as a chancellor and that an electoral loss would be a political career-ender for him. We could wish him a fair win. It means the SPD will go through a leadership change. The new leader will be offered a job as a vice-chancellor and, most likely, foreign minister. Whoever it is, they will be certainly trying to counterbalance Merz as the latter is adamant about an even broader conflict with Russia just as the others spearheaded by the US are seeking to sort it out.
Colour-wise, a radically hawkish pro-Ukrainian coalition would be a Jamaican variety featuring the black CDU, the Greens and the yellow FDP. This coalition would initiate the shipments of the Tauruses to Kiev at the maiden session of the new parliament. But Zelensky is out of luck here.
After removing the notorious hawk Annalena Baerbock from her leadership role, the Greens have scooped up 11.6% of the vote, three percentage points down on their previous electoral tally. But they were expected to produce a much poorer showing because they are part of the current government and, yes, because of Annalena Baerbock personally. However, their result is not enough for them to be considered by Merz as a coalition partner.
As for the liberal FDP, they have received 4.3% of the vote and will be out of the new parliament. Why? Well, above all, because of their self-identity.
The classical liberal ideas – all is permissible and the market should dominate everything else – are currently going through a rough time. The overwhelming majority are hell-bent on banning something or someone and redistribute the wealth, except they are at loggerheads over whom they should ban or how they should redistribute.
But the German liberals do the things that are oh so liberal as they are trying to make up for their lack of popularity by staging expensive ad campaigns and adding a thick layer of a political spin. By getting too deep into the strategising, Christian Lindner, the FDP’s leader, has eventually broken his political backbone. According to the investigative journalists, he deliberately crushed the Scholz-led ruling coalition, precipitating a snap election where he was hoping to garner some extra votes. But the voters flipped him the bird and his party shed more than 60% of the past support.
All things considered, Friedrich Merz has no choice but to join hands with the washed-up SDP. This coalition will certainly not add to the CDU’s popularity while Chancellor Merz will as certainly be forced to backpedal on both parts of his campaign agenda: shipping the missiles to Zelensky and curbing the immigration.
To be fair, there are two more options, but Merz is highly unlikely to go for either.
One would be forging a ruling coalition with the AfD. That is what Donald Trump, Elon Musk and many conservative-minded Germans (mostly the AfD voters) would like him to do. But for Merz, that would mean challenging the EU, violating the taboo and flip-flopping on his own vow to stay away from Eurosceptics.
His final option is no coalition at all. That is, months into a feckless back-and-forth with the SPD, he will arrive at the impossibility to accept the arranged marriage deal. So, he will be forced to bow out and call another early election. In Bulgaria, snap elections seem to be all the rage, and yet, they somehow manage to survive the tumult.
But for Merz, that would mean another painful loss as he wouldn’t be able to serve as a chancellor despite winning the election.
Amid the months-long government crisis, things may change all over the map: Germany, Ukraine, the Russia–US and the US–EU relations. These changes may prove to be eye-opening for the Germans. It may eventually occur to them that they do not want a chancellor reckless enough to drag their country into a foreign military conflict as it is winding down. If that is the case, they will be looking for radical alternatives.