Exit polls indicate CDU/CSU set to be largest party but success of Alternative für Deutschland likely to complicate formation of a government

Summary

Germany’s conservative CDU/CSU, led by Friedrich Merz, won around 29% of the vote in the snap general election, making Merz the frontrunner to form a ruling coalition.

The far-right AfD surged to 20%, nearly doubling its 2021 result, but remains politically isolated as major parties refuse to cooperate with it.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats suffered their worst result since WWII, while his coalition partners, the Greens and FDP, also lost support.

Merz faces challenges forming a government, addressing economic woes, and countering the AfD’s growing influence.

  • @LwL
    1•5 hours ago

    It’s not a great system honestly. Throwing away ~14% of votes (that is several million people) isn’t very democratic. It’s not entirely pointless, but at least having a main vote and one fallback vote if the main vote doesn’t make 5% would reduce that number by a lot, without encouraging heavy fracturization of parties (while still remaining computationally feasible to count, which is a real problem with systems that fully remove strategic voting).

    At least this time I’m happy that neither the libertarian car fetish party nor the tankie light party made it in, but systemically it’s not great.