February 22, 2025 - 8:00am
It’s tempting to think of the German snap election on Sunday as a done deal. The conservative CDU/CSU is firmly in the lead. They won’t form a coalition with the anti-immigration AfD, so will likely end up working with the centre-left SPD or the Greens, possibly both.
But much is up in the air. Many voters are undecided, and small parties have the power to decisively alter the complex parliamentary arithmetic. In the end, the political future of Europe’s largest economy may be decided by a few thousand votes.
For the first time in decades, many Germans yearn to break the status quo. A recent YouGov poll found that over three-quarters of voters want “big” or even “very big” change in economic and immigration policy. Tellingly, only 43% expect such change to come about. It’s this pessimism that makes their behaviour in the polling booth hard to predict. It could lead to tactical voting on an unprecedented scale as voters think beyond political parties to get the kind of politics they want. I’ve seen Left-wing campaigners ask Green voters to vote for the SPD or vice versa in order to beat a conservative constituency candidate.
One young woman told me yesterday that instead of voting for the hard-Left party Die Linke, she’ll vote conservative this time. When I baulked at such a jump from one end of the spectrum to the other, she shrugged. “Sometimes you’ve got to do what’s in the country’s interest rather than your own.” What she wants most of all, she explained, is stability and for that one party needs to get enough votes to steer the course. A further splintering, she reckoned, would create more chaos which would only suit the AfD. A recent poll suggested that she’s not alone: nearly 70% of Germans worry that they might not get a stable government.
Then there are the undecided — around a fifth of voters on the eve of the election, according to a survey. They are unlikely to stop the conservatives from winning. The CDU/CSU have hovered around the 30% mark for weeks but will influence coalition-building. The conservatives are upholding their “firewall” against the AfD, so they will have to look Left. Ideally, they’d like to work with the SPD to form a centrist bloc. However, the SPD has been polling around 15%, and it might be tight for the two centrist parties to get a majority together.
Even if only a few votes are missing, the conservatives may have to invite the Green Party into the centrist boat. The Greens have made the phasing out of the combustion engine a precondition for cooperation. They favour open borders and hate both nuclear power and fossil fuels. It’s hard to see how the drastic change in economic and immigration policy will come about when the conservatives allow both Left-wing parties that are currently in government to stay.
Lastly, a new wildcard has been making the rounds on social media. What if both of Germany’s Left-wing parties, Die Linke and the BSW, make it into parliament? Could they form a bloc with the SPD and the Greens that outnumbers the conservatives? If they come even close, such a scenario would give the SPD and the Greens huge leverage over the conservative party even though it is predicted to get more votes than the other two combined. In that case, might the CDU/CSU be tempted to rule with AfD support if not in a formal coalition?
The range of possibilities is wide open, not least because German parties need to get above 5% of the vote or win constituencies outright to get seats in parliament. Currently, three parties are hovering on that threshold. If they don’t get in, the seat share of the big parties increases, making it easier for them to form majorities. If they all get in, a splintered parliament will emerge.
This election will be a nail-biter. But Europe’s largest economy cannot afford to drift around rudderless in times of crisis.
Katja Hoyer is a German-British historian and writer. She is the author, most recently, of Beyond the Wall: East Germany, 1949-1990.
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SubscribeAnybody in Britain who complains about the FPTP parliamentary system only has to look at the circus that occurs with PR in most European systems to realize how good Britain has it.
100% agree.
Yes, PR just means no-one gets the government they want.
I have no brief for PR but who wanted Free Gear Keir getting 410 MPs with 33pc of the vote?
If you have a majority does it matter how big?
This isn’t the fault of FPTP so much as the constituency boundaries which heavily favour Labour over all other parties (both left and right wing.)
This isn’t Gerrymanduring but simply how constituencies have evolved over decades, particularly in urban areas which have much more effect for a much smaller percentage of vote than in rural areas.
It does however mean that almost always we have a governing party and an opposition party. They might both be rubbish, they might both be brilliant, but at least there’s none of the “horsetrading”, “backroom deals”. We saw what a disaster that was when we had a coalition between the “2 lib dem parties”.
Worse still coalition corrupts parties. The Conservatives were corrupted by their coalition with the LibDems and have yet to recover. However, the disadvantages of PR have been exacerbated by the absurd fire wall against the AfD whose policies are mostly those supposedly advocated by the CDU. You can’t take CDU’s policies seriously if they are not prepared to enter coalition with a party that supports them but only with parties that oppose them.
I used to think this about the Tories but I think in hindsight it was pure cope and selective memory. The Tories were useless SOBs prior to 2010. The Tories ironically created Blairism (Thatcher said Blair and New Labour were her greatest achievement), and then in the 2000s they adopted Blairism, with a partial exception regarding views on the EU (and look how they botched Brexit!).
You are right. I am perhaps affected by recency biases.
It is easy to forget the long period of relative national decline under successive post-war Conservative governments and that top income tax rates for many years after WW2 remained at around 90% levels under conservative governments – levels that Jeremy Corbin dared not dream of. Top income tax rates only fell under Thatcher and remained reasonably stable thereafter under Blair and Brown.
Edited addendum:
I see my comment will not allow either up ticks or down ticks or any direct reply. No doubt normal service will be restored after the weekend when we have all lost interest as recently happened on another thread. I don’t know if this is a feature or a bug.
I now live in NZ and it works fine.
You can get the tail wagging the dog at times but to it’s much better than seeing parties given absolute majorities on around 1/3 of the vote.
At least the government in MMP has received a majority of votes cast. If parties deviate too far from their manifesto then the tend to be punished for it at the next election
Ha ha! It was a pound to a bilberry that the politically correct would suddenly find merit in first past the post which they have been deriding as undemocratic.
Assuming the fact that the FDP aren’t mentioned means they are pretty much screwed?
The “three parties” referred to which are hovering around the 5% threshold are the Linke, the BSW and the FDP. So the later, while not explicitly mentioned, was alluded to in the article.
If the conservatives invite the Green Party into the ‘centrist’ boat it will be business as usual. They’ve been steering that boat for many years. That’s why Germany and therefore the Euro is in big trouble.
The whole fire wall mantra against the AfD is both undemocratic and absurd.
The bulk of the policies advocated by AfD are policies that any conservative could agree to. They may have a few head banging extremists in the ranks but they have no one in a responsible position advocation a final solution and their female candidate for Chancellor is in a relationship with another woman and have adopted children together. A few years back she would have been ruled out as being far too socially “progressive” by even ostensibly left leaning parties to be their leader.
A coalition is just that. The parties enact what they both agree on and might throw a policy bone on policies the majority party doesn’t actually object to. The fire wall simply signals that the CDU are not serious about the policies they ostensibly support if they are only prepared to go into coalition with parties that don’t support the policies they espouse as opposed to a party that does support their ostensible policies. Their policy platform is merely to garner votes; not to actually be enacted with any vigorous intent.
> The Greens have made the phasing out of the combustion engine a precondition for cooperation.
These people are insane, if the greens get any power then I say let Germany get what they deserve.
The problem across Europe is that ordinary people with legitimate concerns are dismissed as “far right”. Had established political parties addressed their concerns the “far right” organisations would not have been necessary.
Germany faces tough choices. I’m not sure it’s going to matter much who wins the election. Any government that emerges will face forces it can’t really control.
I wouldn’t say the CDU/CSU are ‘conservative’. What exactly has Merkel’s party been conserving? Rather like our own Conservatives, only worse.
BTW and for anyone interested, I find the Euggypius substack a good source of analytical German news (though it’s about to go behind a paywall).
As in US, Germany is not a democracy. The hypocrisy by mainstream parties is so apparent.
Europe’s largest economy? Wonder how long that will last?