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German national election results, implications, and potential Indo-German partnership under projected Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

The German national election concluded on 23 February with the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and their partners Christian Social Union (CSU), together known as the Union, garnering 28.6% of the vote share. Its leader, Friedrich Merz, is slated to become Germany’s next Chancellor.  

German national elections generally happen in September. This election took place earlier than expected due to the implosion of the ‘traffic light coalition’ of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), liberal Free Democrats (FDP), and environmental Greens last November. The Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost the no-confidence motion for the minority government of SPD and Greens, prompting the German President to announce an early election.  

At 82.5%, voter participation was the highest this year since the German reunification.  

While the Union won the election as expected in nationwide polls, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) came in second with 20.8% votes, thereby doubling its vote share since the last election in 2021. It is worth noting that in three German States —Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony — the AfD has been designated as right-wing extremist by the German intelligence agency.  

The ‘traffic light coalition’ parties faced dismal results. The SPD, with a 16.4% vote share, registered its worst performance in over a century. The Greens secured 11.6% of the vote share, and the liberal FDP couldn’t make the 5% cut needed to enter the German parliament. The leaders of all three parties — Mr. Scholz (SPD), Robert Habeck (Greens), and Christian Lindner (FDP) — have decided to step down from their top roles in their respective parties, with Mr. Lindner even retiring from active politics.  

The biggest surprise in the election was the far-left Die Linke, which secured 8.5% of the vote share despite having undesirable poll numbers till January this year and an existential crisis last year after one of its most popular leaders defected to form another party.  

The next step is coalition formation as none of the parties have garnered an absolute majority which amounts to 316 our of the 630 seats in the Bundestag or German parliament. The Union is most likely expected to partner with SPD to form the Grand Coalition, the talks for which began on Friday (February 28, 2025). The Federal Electoral Committee will announce the final results of the election to the Bundestag on March 14.