According to the American essayist H.L. Mencken, “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.” This most certainly will be the case in Germany after yesterday’s federal elections. While everyone was expecting a significant shift to the Right, it barely happened at all. After an impressive voter turnout of 84 per cent, a level unseen since the early 1990s German reunification, there is notable disappointment among those who were supposed to be triumphant victors. Despite Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats securing a clear win, the outcome is still the party’s second poorest in history. In 2021, the CDU received 24 per cent of the vote compared to 28 per cent this year, highlighting the decline of a party that consistently garnered over 30 per cent until four years ago. Alice Weidel of the AfD also finds herself disappointed, despite the party nearly doubling its share to about 20 per cent. Given the backing from figures like Elon Musk, US Vice President JD Vance, and a recent spate of terrorist attacks that typically bolster right-wing populist support, this result falls considerably short of expectations.
In fact, Germany’s two truly right-wing parties, the CDU (plus its Bavarian sister party, the CSU) and the AfD did not manage to get a joint vote share of over 50 per cent. A slim majority of Germans apparently wants to see the continuation of left-wing policies, despite all the problems the left-leaning traffic light coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and Liberals has caused. The CDU’s Merz will be the next chancellor, but he will need left-of-centre coalition partners since he categorically ruled out any cooperation with the AfD. And even here he – and the German people – dodged a bullet. Yet another left wing party, the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) missed the required 5 per cent threshold by only 13,000 votes. If the party would have made it into the Bundestag, the seat distribution would have been altered in such a way that the CDU-CSU would have needed not just one, but two left wing parties for a stable majority: or to put it differently, it was down to 13,000 votes that two-thirds of the previous traffic light coalition (not just the SPD but also the Greens) would have re-entered the next government. The third light of the former government, the liberal democrats (FDP) also missed the required 5 per cent, demonstrating that market libertarianism alone does not convince many voters.
The true winner of the night was the party called Die Linke (The Left). Just a few months ago, the party seemed likely to fall below the 5 per cent threshold for parliamentary seats. It was weakened when one of its most popular former members, Sahra Wagenknecht, left to start her own movement called the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW). In a bold shift towards the Left, Die Linke aimed to attract young voters who might have previously supported the Greens, but now see them as part of the establishment. This approach was impressively validated with an unexpected increase of 3.7 percentage points, bringing their total to 8.6 per cent.
This success was made possible also by the 36 year old candidate Heide Reichinnek and her one million followers on TikTok. She targeted especially young female voters with tremendous success: among 18 to 24 year olds, the party came in first with 27 per cent of the vote, followed by the AfD with 21 per cent. But the truly staggering number are female voters in that age category: 34 per cent cast their vote for The Left putting the second placed AfD (14 per cent) decisively into second place. Another surprising number was how the gay Germans voted: 27.9 per cent voted AfD, followed by 19.9 per cent for the Greens.
It is also not entirely true that the AfD is purely an “East German” phenomenon. 2.8 million votes came from the East, 7.9 million from West Germany. That means 72 per cent of their votes are from the West. The AfD might be strongest in the East, but its appeal is evident in all of Germany.
All in all, these elections were not the massive shift to the Right many would have expected. After the UK, France, and now Germany, all major European countries refused to give parties a chance that would attempt structural reforms from a right-wing perspective. Although 82 per cent of German voters said that they are dissatisfied with the direction of the country and an impressive voter turnout of 84 per cent, the way in which they cast their ballots makes true change impossible. The expected outcome of a coalition government between the two oldest and most establishment parties was entirely foreseeable unless significantly more than 20 per cent of the people would have voted for the AfD. Now the Germans are stuck with a CDU-CSU and SPD coalition that can at best manage the country’s decline, but will not lead to the 180 degree turnaround that is needed. Barely 24 hours after the election, Merz has already begun to soften his stance on migration, announcing that “nobody wants to close the border” and on the 24th of February another chartered flight with 155 migrants from Afghanistan landed in Berlin.
The condition in Germany reminds one of a doctor who is increasing the medication of a patient but never to the point where it would truly have an effect. Certainly, the AfD doubled its vote share and is now the second largest party in parliament, but 20 per cent are not enough to pressure the CDU-CSU into collaborating with them. Maybe things will be different in four years, but who knows? Maybe it will be too late by then, and not even 30 per cent for the AfD could return Germany to a prosperous and industrious nation.
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