German Federal Elections
Multiple Influential Parties Vie for Political Power
In parliamentary systems of government you don’t always know there’s going to be an election – but there will be signs. One such example is Germany, where voters are preparing to head to the polls on Feb. 23.
Just four years ago, current German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) scored a surprise plurality in the German Bundestag and formed a ruling coalition with the Green Party and the Free Democratic Party (FDP). Together, the new coalition paved the way for the first non-Christian Democratic Union (CDU/CSU) chancellor since 2002, a position held by Angela Merkel, who opted against seeking a fifth term.
Today, the script has flipped, and CDU/CSU is once again poised to take back a plurality of the Bundestag. This comes after its members passed a no-confidence motion in Scholz before Christmas, triggering the upcoming elections. Some of the signs that showed this was poised to happen were aggregate polling, economic indicators, conflicts and interestingly enough – bookstores.
First, the polls.
Scholz’s SPD has been losing ground in the polls for the better part of three years, according to PolitPro’s polling aggregate (meaning average of all polls). CDU/CSU currently has the top spot, projected to win almost 40 percent of seats, while SPD has fallen all the way to third with a projected 20 percent. They’re sandwiching the Alternative for Deutschland party (AFD), the furthest-right party in contention for significant seats in the Bundestag. No party is set to take an outright majority of the Bundestag, an almost guarantee in post-war Germany.
AFD was founded in 2013. 2025 will be their first opportunity to become the official opposition, if CDU/CSU holds their leadn and opts not to form a coalition with them. AFD is projected to win by about 25 percent. All parties have publicly indicated a desire to avoid coalitions with AFD.
SPD is polling poorly, but the FDP, part of their ruling coalition, is projected to lose its spot in the Bundestag entirely. In Germany, parties need to win five percent of the vote share, except for parties representing national minorities, to have seats in the federal government. FDP does not solely represent any national minority group and is projected to just clear four percent.
Other parties in play to potentially win seats are the Greens, the Left, and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) — a party founded by former the former lead woman of The Left, Sahra Wagenknecht. None of them are projected to win many seats, but each could pass the five percent threshold and earn a spot at the table.
The economic indicators and the conflicts.
Economic downturn has been the leading cause of electoral anxiety in recent memory. Last year, it tanked former United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s premiership after he called an election. Additionally, it cost French President Emmanuel Macron seats in French parliament during last summer’s snap election, and appears to have Canada’s Liberal Party, and soon to resign PM Justin Trudeau, on the verge of a similar outcome.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, SPD’s polling trended down in unison with Germany’s shrinking economy and rising unemployment rate. Ripples from Germany’s economic woes have been felt across the rest of the European Union, specifically in the energy sector, in which Germany is the continent’s top producer. This especially important following the surge of energy prices endemic of Russia’s prolonged war in Ukraine.
Of course, Berlin had nothing to do with starting the Russo-Ukraine war. However, Germans may have been more lenient had Scholz not promised advantageous green energy investment and a second “Wirtschaftswunder” (German for “economic miracle”), referencing West Germany’s post-war economic rebound in the 1950s. According to The Financial Times, the economy grew by 1.4 percent in Scholz’s first year but has shrunk in the two years since.
The bookstores.
Promotion and publication of biographies and memoirs of public figures and high-ranking politicians are indicative of elections just about everywhere in the world. In the United States, Vice President JD Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s “True Gretch,” and Melania Trump’s “Melania” come to mind.
In Germany, most bookstores have a table near the entrance littered with political titles – including the biographies of most party leaders, one being CDU/CSU leader, and likely Germany’s next chancellor, Friedrich Merz’s biography titled “Sein Weg zur Macht.”
However, one book stands out among the rest, and it doesn’t belong to a current candidate for chancellor. Angela Merkel’s mammoth biography, “Freiheit” (“Freedom”), fills entire front windows and lines entire bookstore walls. It came out in November and instantly became a German Bestseller. A week later, it became the most successful German book of 2024, according to Euro News.
Merkel never lost an election for chancellor, and despite some controversy over her nearly two decades in office, she bowed out in 2021 as one of the most popular German politicians of her era. Stability in politics often breeds contempt, but its isn’t uncommon for the ruled to look back at former politicians with rose-colored nostalgia glasses after several years out of power – especially as contemporary politics appear to be fraught with uncertainty.
The outcomes of the February elections will influence not just Germany, but the future of the economy of Europe, and the rest of the world as well.