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The 2025 German election in charts

February 23, 2025

Germans have elected a new parliament. Here are the most important trends you need to know.

Who has won the German election?

The center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the  Christian Social Union (CSU), have been projected as the winners of Germany's February 23,2025, parliamentary election. The Union parties enjoy a lead of some 10 percentage points over the far-right populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), which came in second. 

The AfD has grown in popularity, and in September 2024 posted major gains in regional elections in the eastern states of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg. It saw massive support across the east of the country in the Bundestag vote.

The governing Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Greens followed in third and fourth places, while the neoliberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), which was previously part of a three-way governing coalition, looks as if it will fail to make it back into parliament.

Vote gains / losses by party

As polls close it has become clear that the big winner of the night was the AfD, which added 9.8% to its share of the vote since the last federal elections; with the SPD inversely slipping by nearly as much (-9.5%).

Overall vote shares by party

Returns point to a resounding victory for CDU/CSU (28.6%) and AfD in second place with 20.4%. Chancellor Olaf Scholz's SPD came in a distant third, taking only 16.3% of the vote. Neither the FDP nor the BSW look to have cleared the 5% parliamentary hurdle.

Distribution of seats

With returns in, the make up of Germany's Bundestag is becoming clearer, with the CDU/CSU scoring 208 of seats, followed by AfD with 151 and the SPD with 121.

Who will be Germany's next chancellor?

Voters who cast their ballots on February 23, 2025, did not directly elect the next German chancellor. Instead, they will elect politicians to the Bundestag, the lower house of German parliament. Unless a party wins an outright majority by itself, the party with the most representatives in the Bundestag attempts to build a governing coalition that holds a parliamentary majority. Ordinarily, the party with the most votes in a ruling coalition appoints its declared chancellor candidate to lead the government.

Despite not being directly elected, the popularity of each party's top candidate is regularly tracked alongside that of the party itself. Friedrich Merz, the CDU/CSU's chancellor candidate, is currently the frontrunner for the job.

This is particularly interesting if you look at Merz's current numbers compared to those from 2021 — Merz was not the CDU/CSU chancellor candidate in that election, but pollsters still tracked his popularity. The 2021 election resulted in a three-way coalition between the center-left SPD, the environmentalist Greens, and the neoliberal FDP. The recent collapse of that coalition triggered the February 23 vote.

Polling indicates that Merz is not in front because his own approval ratings have improved so significantly, but rather because Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD chancellor candidate) and Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens chancellor candidate) have become so unpopular.

 

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