AfD has fed herself on economic challenges, anti-immigration sentiments, and growing skepticism about providing military aid to Ukraine – predicting to even do better, if the upcoming coalition will go against the people’s will of spending more money for armament and lesser for social expenditure.
By Navneet Pal
Groundxero | March 10, 2025
Germany has elected its federal parliament, the Bundestag for the 21st time. It is the first time after World War II that an openly far-right party, namely the AfD, got voted into parliament with such a strong support. With a voter turnout of 82.5% this election had the highest participation of German people since the unification of East and West Germany in 1990. Regarding the concerning developments prior to it, it does not seem surprising – promising even in certain aspects.
So let us have a look at the results and the faces behind the win.
The election was won by the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with 28.6% of the votes, followed by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as the second strongest party with 20.8%.
The Social Democrats (SPD) won 16.4%, while their former governing coalition partners the Greens and the Fiscally Democratic Party (FDP) got 11.6% and 4.3% respectively, leading the latter to fail to get past the 5% hurdle, which is required to enter the parliament.
Meanwhile, the Left Party had its so-called big comeback with winning 8.8%, entering the parliament after an absence of 2 years again.
What do these results mean and what were the main developments leading up to them?
Friedrich Merz, Chairman of the CDU, is going to be the new Chancellor of Germany. In the first week post elections he has used several occasions to give a direction what exactly this is going to look like.
While it seemed unclear prior elections, if Merz might be playing with the idea to build a coalition with the far-right AfD, he has ruled out this possibility at the night of his electoral victory, for good.
For decades it was said that there is an unbowed consensus among German electoral parties to not cooperate with the far-right when it comes to policy-making – building a “firewall” to the far-right. This firewall got breached by Friedrich Merz himself, when in end of January 2025, three weeks before elections only, the CDU’s highly problematic immigration resolution could get passed in parliament with the support of the AfD.
While this might have been the first time for one of the parliamentary parties to breach this consensus officially, the question that remains is: how real was this firewall ever even?
If it was there to trace the outline towards far-right and fascist ideas, it never existed in the first place, but was rather used as a badge most parties could adorn themselves with.
While all these centre-left to centre categorized parties have been watching implicitly for decades as Neo-Nazis partook in foreigner hunts (Ausländerjagden), racist arson attacks on asylum camps or hate speeches openly, with barely legal consequences, it took them less than a year to jump on the bandwagon of fear mongering against immigrants, pushing the implementation of anti-immigration policies, without the help of the AfD, on several public appearances. So, wanting to appear as the bearer of democracy now, does not sit well. It only shows again, how superficial Germany’s approach to its deeply rooted problem of Racism as well as Anti-Semitism has been, ever since.
Still this official breach of the “firewall” did spark nationwide protests amongst society – Hundreds and Thousands took to the streets, proclaiming they will become a firewall against the rise of fascism themselves, if needed.
After being interrupted in his election campaigns through activists, Merz chose to declare a personal war on “these green and left nutcases”, for whom he believes there is no place left in this country. Remarkably, he made these comments just one night before the elections.
That one of the first official acts of the CDU post elections was the demand to inspect the government’s funds for several progressive and democratic associations and NGOs like the investigative journalist collective Corrective or Grannies against Right, thus doesn’t come as a surprise. In fact, it unmasks the CSU’s own fascist tendencies, only.
Merz’s invitation to Netanyahu for an official visit to Germany, despite the international arrest warrant issued against him by the ICC, serves as yet another indication.
Very likely the CDU is going to build a coalition with SPD. Merz’s CDU/CSU bloc and the Social Democrats (SPD) of the defeated chancellor, Olaf Scholz, on last Saturday announced they had wrapped up exploratory talks and would move on to the decisive stage of fully fledged coalition negotiations. Merz said both sides had agreed on tough new steps to limit irregular immigration, including refusing all undocumented migrants at the borders, even those seeking asylum. The move was a key demand of Merz, who has stressed the need to win back voters from the far-right AfD.
SDP had won assurances on key demands, such as a €15-an-hour minimum wage from 2026 and stable pensions. Olaf Scholz has shown a lot of support for the ideas of Merz so far. Especially when it comes to armament policy and military expansion, both of these men seem to be on the same page – the faster, the better – aligning with the idea of the European Union to strengthen its military power and position itself independently towards the USA, particularly as the geopolitical landscape shifts.
Germany is hell bent to take a leading role in this process under Merz’s leadership. To arm up to this extent, the country needs to take debts again, which has been prohibited by a “debt brake”, embedded in Article 113 of the German Constitution, which limits public borrowing, and has been a safeguard to prevent excessive debt, especially in light of previous economic crises.
However, Merz’s move to bypass the “debt brake” by reforming this constitutional provision is where things get complex. To change constitutional provisions, it requires a 2/3 majority vote in parliament. Knowing that he won’t get the required support from the newly elected parliament, he’s pushing for this reform to be approved by the outgoing one in its final weeks of governance.
Undeterred by the fact that he would be going against the will of the people, who do not want to fund foreign wars anymore, he keeps advocating for increasing military expenditure (to an amount of 1 billion Euro!), while he urges to cut social spending drastically.
Alice Weidel, Chairwoman of AfD, who had offered to coalition with the CDU herself, has been confident that these developments will lead to further popularity of her party. Doubling their number of votes since the last elections in 2021, the AfD has been basking in their success, declaring themselves as the new party of the people.
With ongoing racist narratives, gathering the new right, but also the disillusioned working class, the AfD has fed herself on economic challenges, anti-immigration sentiments, and growing scepticism about providing military aid to Ukraine – predicting to even do better, if the upcoming coalition will go against the people’s will of spending more money for armament and lesser for social expenditure.
Unfortunately, AfD is not completely wrong with her prognosis. Apart from the Left and the AfD, all the aforementioned parties have shown support for an advancing armament policy. That current supporters of the CDU, who often come from the middle class, might get disillusioned by this and switch to support the AfD in future, is not unlikely to happen.
In the end these so-called conservative, centre-right and even centre-left parties have been leaning to the right themselves, for several years now, leading up to the AfD’s current twisted approach telling voters to: “Vote for the Original!”
Ultimately, the election results confirmed, what has been evident for at least the past decade: A significant portion of society has voted for the right. Whether in its most extreme far-right form or its slightly moderate Christian variant, the shift is clear. German society has yet to fully confront its fascist past, as Nazism did not vanish with the fall of the Third Reich.
While there has been a growing support for the right among young voters, there has also been a strengthening of the Left, highlighting the increasing division within society. The youth, in particular, appears disillusioned with the mainstream party’s inability to address their fears as well as interests for years now. They have largely chosen to vote either for the right or the left, but in both cases, their votes are notably against the ongoing militarization of the country.
This is also where the Left Party is beginning – by bringing in a fresh and fighting spirit into leftist electoral politics, with its new leader Heidi Reichinnek, it is positioning itself as a strong opposition to the planned military expenditure. After a long hiatus due to internal conflicts, that culminated in the split of the Left Party, it seems to be coming back on track fast-forwardly now – with addressing solutions for rising rents, low wages and inflation while upholding a strong front towards the rise of fascism, it is reaching out to the people, especially the working-class effectively again.
And rightly so – as the working-class cannot be lost to the far-right!
NAVNEET PAL is a law student and an activist in a student’s and women’s organization in Germany.