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Centre-right CDU and CSU parties win election, say exit polls
Germany’s centre-right CDU and CSU parties have won the federal elections with about 28.5 to 29 per cent of the vote according to exit polls, paving the way for CDU leader Friedrich Merz to become chancellor at a time of economic and political upheaval in Europe’s largest democracy.
The far-right Alternative for Germany co-led by Alice Weidel recorded its best result with 19.5 — 20 per cent of the vote on Sunday, according to the preliminary projections by state broadcasters ARD and ZDF. That is double what the anti-immigration party achieved in 2021.
Meanwhile Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party won just 16 to 16.5 per cent of the votes.
The AfD had been polling at around 20% for a while. While this is ominous, them not having exceeded their expectations, despite Russia, China and Elon Musk pushing them hard is somewhat of a relief. If the BSW (former hard-leftists now making common cause with the far right, and also strongly Putinist) fall under the threshold because of voters going back to Die Linke (old-school hard-leftists who are not explicitly Putinist), and the Greens don’t collapse, those are also encouraging.
Germany’s looking to have a right-of-centre government, though they have ruled out going into coalition with the AfD, so what’s likely is probably a grand coalition (Großkoalition, or GroKo) bringing in other parties. The SPD as junior partner to the CDU would be unusual, and any left-of-centre parties supporting a right-wing government would risk alienating their supporters, so a CDU-led GroKo would be somewhat constrained in its decision-making. The other option would be a Swedish-style deal where the AfD are not officially in the government but provide support and have a say on policy, though Germany isn’t Sweden, and the far right are probably too toxic to countenance such an arrangement.
SPD has all but officially confirmed their willingness to negotiate a coalition. There FPD won’t have enough votes, if any. And the greens are too far apart.