Merz Appears Poised to Be Germany’s Next Chancellor
Exit polls suggest that Friedrich Merz, the candidate for the conservative Christian Democrats who has vowed to bring stronger leadership in Europe, will be Germany’s next leader. The hard-right AfD party was in second place.
Germans voted for a change of leadership on Sunday, handing the most votes in a parliamentary election to centrist conservatives, with the far right in second, and rebuking the nation’s left-leaning government for its handling of the economy and immigration.
The results almost certainly mean the country’s next chancellor will be Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democrats. Returns posted early Monday morning indicated that he had a path to governing Germany with only one coalition partner, the relatively stable scenario that his party had hoped for.
“We have won it,” Mr. Merz told supporters in Berlin on Sunday evening, promising to swiftly form a parliamentary majority to govern the country and restore strong German leadership in Europe.
The election, which was held seven months ahead of schedule after the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s unpopular and long-troubled three-party coalition, will now become an essential part of the European response to President Trump’s new world order. It drew the highest voter turnout in decades.
Mr. Merz, 69, has promised to crack down on migrants and slash taxes and business regulations in a bid to kick-start economic growth. He also vowed to bring a more assertive foreign policy to help Ukraine and stronger leadership in Europe at a moment when the new Trump administration has sowed anxiety by scrambling traditional alliances and embracing Russia.
A businessman who has never served as a government minister, Mr. Merz was once seen as a potentially better counterpart for the American president than Mr. Scholz, but in the campaign’s final days he mused about whether the United States would remain a democracy under Mr. Trump. He strongly condemned what Germans saw as meddling by Trump administration officials on behalf of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
“My top priority, for me, will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that we can gradually achieve real independence from the U.S.A.,” Mr. Merz said in a televised round-table after polls closed. “I would never have thought I’d be saying something like this on TV, but after last week’s comments from Donald Trump, it’s clear that this administration is largely indifferent to Europe’s fate, or at least to this part of it.”
Returns showed that Mr. Merz’s Christian Democrats and their sister party, the Christian Social Union, won just under 29 percent of the vote combined. It was a low share historically for the top party in a German election, and the second-lowest showing ever for Mr. Merz’s party in a chancellor election.
Both are signs of the multiplying fissures in the nation’s politics and the weaknesses of the centrist mainstream parties that have governed Germany for decades.
There was great suspense on Sunday evening about the coalition Mr. Merz would be able to assemble, but he was clearly hoping for a rerun of the centrist governments that ran Germany for much of former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 16-year tenure: the Christian Democrats in the lead, with the Social Democrats as a lone junior partner.
Near-final returns posted early on Monday morning suggested he might have squeaked it out — barely. They indicated that the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, a pro-Russia splinter from the old German left, had fallen just short of the 5 percent support it needed to get into Parliament. That apparent failure — by a margin of less than 14,000 votes — would mean that only five parties would make it into the next Parliament. In that scenario, Mr. Merz’s party and the Social Democrats could form a majority with no other partners.
Had another small party made it into Parliament, Mr. Merz would have been forced to find a third coalition partner. That could have led to another potentially unwieldy and unstable government for Germany, reconfigured but with some of the same vulnerabilities as the one that recently collapsed.
Mr. Merz has promised never to join with the second-place finisher, the AfD, which routinely flirts with Nazi slogans and whose members have diminished the Holocaust and have been linked to plots to overthrow the government. But the returns showed that the AfD is a growing force in German politics, even if it fell short of its ambitions in this election.
The AfD doubled its vote share from four years ago, largely by appealing to voters upset by the millions of refugees who entered the country over the last decade from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Ukraine and elsewhere. In the former East Germany, it finished first.
Its vote share appeared to fall short of its high mark of support in the polls from a year ago, however. Many analysts had been expecting a stronger showing, after a sequence of events that elevated the party and its signature issue.
The AfD received public support from Vice President JD Vance and the billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk. It sought to make political gains out of a series of deadly attacks committed by migrants in recent months, including in the final days of the campaign.
But that boon never materialized. Reaction to the recent attacks and the support from Trump officials may have even mobilized a late burst of support to Die Linke, the party of Germany’s far left, which campaigned on a pro-immigration platform, some voters suggested in interviews on Sunday.
For all of that movement, the most likely coalition partner for Mr. Merz appears to be the one analysts have predicted for months: Mr. Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats, even though they experienced a steep drop in support from four years ago.
Interviews and early returns suggested voters were angry at Mr. Scholz’s government over high grocery prices and inadequate wage growth, and polls suggested economic and migration issues topped voters’ minds.
Many voters, even those who backed the Christian Democrats, said they were not enthusiastic about Mr. Merz personally. But they hoped that he could forge a strong government to solve problems at home and abroad and keep Germany’s far right at bay.
“The biggest risk for Germany at the moment is that we will have an unstable majority,” said Felix Saalfeld, 32, a doctor in the eastern city of Dresden who voted for Mr. Merz’s Christian Democrats. “That’s why it’s best if the C.D.U./C.S.U. gets a lot of votes and we can somehow form a coalition with as few people as possible, even if it’s not my party.”
Mr. Merz will seek to lead Europe in trade and security conflicts with the Trump administration, which has rapidly been reshuffling the United States’ global alliances. He is also likely to face a daunting task in trying to reinvigorate a slumping economy that has not grown, in real terms, for half a decade.
Voters said they would look to the next government to stoke growth and cushion the pain of post-pandemic inflation.
“Everything is getting more expensive, and at the same time, wages are not rising,” said Rojin Yilmaz, 20, a trainee at Allianz in Aschaffenburg, a city where an immigrant with mental illness killed a toddler and an adult last month. Mr. Yilmaz voted for Die Linke.
In interviews in Dresden, a bastion of support for the AfD, some voters said they had lost faith in mainstream parties to address immigration and other issues.
“I voted for the AfD,” said Andreas Mühlbach, 70. “It is the only alternative that is able to change things here.”
With support for the AfD on the rise, Martin Milner, 59, an educator and musician in Potsdam who split his ticket between the Greens and Die Linke, said he hopes German’s defensive democracy holds fast against the right-wing threat.
“I’m hoping that this system will show itself to be resilient enough,” Mr. Milner said, “that it can manage the problems we have without drifting to one extreme or the other.”
Reporting was contributed by Christopher F. Schuetze, Melissa Eddy and Tatiana Firsova from Berlin; Sam Gurwitt from Aschaffenburg; Adam Sella from Potsdam; and Catherine Odom from Dresden.
Now that the votes are cast, the real work in Berlin can begin.
While reconstituting parliament is relatively easy and must be done in the next three weeks, no party is expected to get enough votes to govern alone and outright. That means Germany is likely headed for a coalition government — and the process of building one could take months.
The party with the most votes on Sunday will have to find partners. Depending on how many small parties enter parliament and how well the big ones do, the next government could need two or three parties to get together.
In the coming days, Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, will invite the leader of the winning party — widely expected to be Friedrich Merz, from the Christian Democrats, or C.D.U. — to Bellevue Palace to ask him to try to form a government. That will involve talking with other parties to try to find the partners to get a majority — 316 seats — in parliament.
In reality, the leaders of parties have already been thinking about all that for some time, and certain options, like involving the hard-right Alternative for Germany, are unlikely. But the initial talks are important to show that all options are — theoretically, at least — on the table.
Next, parties that are open to a coalition will come together for pre-coalition talks. Held with just a few leaders from each party, those talks can be thought of as a really boring first date, where the parties check whether they might fit together. And sometimes, they don’t: In 2017, the leader of the liberal Free Democrats surprisingly broke off talks with Angela Merkel’s C.D.U. and Ms. Merkel had to start searching for a coalition partner all over again.
Once the parties agree that they can see a future together, they move on to formal coalition talks.
Those are the most complex part of the negotiations, and typically take the longest. Parties get together to agree on specific laws they hope to pass during their tenure and to divvy up ministerial posts. Just because party functionaries put so much time and effort into these discussions, however, does not mean that the coalition always ends in agreement.
As neighboring Austria showed when its conservative-far-right coalition talks surprisingly ended in January, the most likely outcome of such a failure would be to go talk with other parties again.
Once the coalition agreement is drafted, and the ministries set, parties may have to go back to their base to get approval. Only then do parties sign the agreement and return to parliament to elect the chancellor, who then names his ministers.
Until then, Olaf Scholz and his ministers will remain on as the caretaker government.
How long all of that would take remains to be seen; in the past, it has varied greatly from government to government. In 2017, it took 171 days. Ms. Merkel remained chancellor for 73 days after the 2021 election before being replaced by Mr. Scholz.
Latest exit poll projections
| Party | Pct. | 2021 |
|---|---|---|
| CDU/CSU | 28.5 | 24.1 |
| AfD | 20.7 | 10.3 |
| SPD | 16.5 | 25.7 |
| Greens | 11.7 | 14.8 |
| Die Linke | 8.7 | 4.9 |
| BSW | 4.9 | — |
| FDP | 4.4 | 11.5 |
Source: Infratest dimap/ARD
Note: Exit poll projections are an estimate of the final results, which will be available around 10 p.m. Eastern time. Final 2021 results shown for comparison.
Last updated at 5:50 p.m. Eastern.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTFriedrich Merz is likely to be Germany’s next chancellor. But many voters do not seem that excited about that prospect — even some who backed him on Sunday.
Mr. Merz’s Christian Democrats appear to have won the election, according to exit polls, though with a relatively low share of the vote by historical standards. In Dresden and Potsdam on Sunday, few voters expressed much enthusiasm for the candidacy of Mr. Merz, a conservative businessman who has never been a minister.
“He hasn’t achieved anything, and for me he isn’t sympathetic,” said Sigrid Müller, 60, of Potsdam, who voted for the Christian Democrats out of concern for the nation’s faltering economy. “But he’s the lesser evil, the least evil.”
Sten Hornig, a longtime Christian Democrat voter in Dresden, also said he voted more for the party as a whole than for Mr. Merz specifically.
Some voters criticized Mr. Merz for attempting to pass a measure last month to tighten some immigration controls, and in the process, breaking a taboo against working in Parliament with parties deemed extreme. Mr. Merz knew his measure could only pass with votes from the hard-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, a party he has repeatedly vowed not to include in government even though it was expected to finish second in Sunday’s vote.
Chris Buschmann, a Dresden voter who identified himself as left-leaning but wouldn’t say which party he voted for, said he did not like Mr. Merz personally. “I would be OK if he was like he was four years ago, but recent events and recent speeches, he is kind of leaning always more to the right,” he said.
Mr. Merz, though, doesn’t necessarily appeal to supporters of the hard right. Anja Zeumer, an AfD voter from Dresden, called Mr. Merz a “traitor.” Ms. Zeumer cast her ballot on Sunday with her neighbor Andreas Mühlbacher, who also voted for the AfD and who called Mr. Merz “a warmonger” who was “unsuitable for the job.”
Karen Kramp, a Potsdam resident, said she voted for the Christian Democrats because she thought they were best suited to improve Germany’s lagging infrastructure and schools. “I have grandchildren in fourth grade and they aren’t studying German because there are no teachers,” she said.
But, she added, she is no fan of Mr. Merz. Ms. Kramp said she simply hoped that Germany’s likely next chancellor would bring a collaborative approach to his governing, “not the chaos we have today.”
Projections show the Left party getting 8.6 percent of the vote — a huge surge given that they were polling at just 3 percent months ago. The Left’s top candidate, Heidi Reichinneck, said that her party “did everything right” during the campaign by prioritizing direct communication with the voters. “More than 90,000 party members went from door to door” to talk about “affordable, lower taxes” and other communal issues, she said.
Germany’s next government will almost certainly be a coalition of multiple political parties, to form a majority in Parliament. But one party will almost certainly be excluded from that coalition, no matter how well it ultimately performs: the hard-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
While early exit polls on Sunday showed the AfD in second place, largely on the strength of its opposition to mass migration and its pledge to deport some migrants, every other mainstream German party refuses to invite it into government. That blockade is known in Germany as the “firewall,” and it is a direct result of the country’s post-World War II efforts to suppress parties and voices labeled extreme.
Rival parties cite a wide array of evidence for calling the AfD extreme and for keeping it behind the firewall. Some parts of the AfD have been classified as extremist by German intelligence. Some of its members have been convicted of violating German law against the use of Nazi slogans, and others have been arrested for trying to overthrow the federal government. Recently, an AfD volunteer greeted fellow election canvassers, in front of a New York Times reporter, with a Nazi salute.
To date, Germany has been the most successful major European power at shutting its hard-right party out of power, along with France, where a group of rival parties engaged in strategic voting last summer to deny the hard-right National Rally a parliamentary majority.
Other such firewalls in Europe have fallen or come under pressure in recent years, including in the Netherlands, Hungary and Italy. Earlier this month, U.S. Vice President JD Vance urged all Europeans — including Germans — to work with hard-right parties that he cast as legitimate avatars of public anxiety over immigration. “There is no room for firewalls,” Mr. Vance said in Munich.
Germany’s political parties have promised to maintain the AfD firewall after the election — a pledge reiterated on Sunday night by Friedrich Merz, who is poised to become the next chancellor, after exit polls showed his party in the lead.
But if the AfD has an even stronger than expected showing — well above 20 percent — it could be harder for parties to work around it and may raise new questions about how long the blockade can last.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTIn a race where the main winners and losers were clear from the moment voting closed and the first exit polls were available, the thrill of the evening for some was watching to see if Germany’s smaller parties could eke out enough votes to enter Parliament.
Supporters of both the liberal Free Democrats, or F.D.P., and the left-wing populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, or B.S.W., were glued to their screens as results were posted, waiting to see if their parties cleared the required bar of winning 5 percent of the vote to win seats. It could take hours to know for sure.
Just three months ago, the Free Democrats were not only in Parliament, but were part of the governing coalition, too. Their leader, Christian Lindner, was finance minister, one of the most important posts in any German government. But after he goaded Mr. Scholz into kicking him out of the coalition in November, therefore precipitating the government collapse, his party never really recovered in the polls. Some voters blamed him for the end of the government, while others blamed him for being part of the government in the first place.
On Sunday night as votes trickled in, Mr. Lindner seemed close to conceding — both the race and his leadership of the Free Democrats. “Whatever happens, the flag of the F.D.P. will fly again tomorrow,” he told supporters. Later, during a live debate on public television, he added that if his party does not make it into Parliament, “then my leadership is over.”
Ms. Wagenknecht founded her party, the B.S.W., last year. She subsequently enjoyed a string of successes in the European election and state elections that raised expectations the party would easily make it into Parliament. But that looked increasingly uncertain in recent months, in part because her message never really extended beyond a pro-Russia, anti-migrant platform.
On Sunday night, Ms. Wagenknecht promised supporters that the party would survive even if it does not make it into Parliament.
But the success or failure of the smaller parties — at least in parliamentary terms — will probably have bigger ramifications.
If they do not make it into Parliament, Friedrich Merz of the conservative Christian Democrats would probably have the seats to form a government with the Social Democrats. If the parties do make it in, Mr. Merz could be forced to form a coalition with two partners — a prospect most Germans were hoping to avoid.
Scholz will stay on as chancellor during any coalition negotiations, and Merz asked for his cooperation during that time. “We have to ensure that we are capable of acting internationally,” Merz said during the televised debate.
Things got heated when Merz reiterated that he would not form a coalition with the AfD. “This so-called Alternative for Germany is not interested in real solutions — his party only exists because there are unresolved issues in Germany,” he said.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTWhile the final results are not yet known, heads of the leading parties are debating in a round-table broadcast live on public television that is known as the “elephant round” given the weight of its participants. The debate can help indicate which parties might be willing to work together to form a government.
It’s worth noting that Merz is smiling. Scholz is not.
Germany’s election was all about the economy, until a Saudi Arabian man rammed an S.U.V. into a crowded Christmas market in December, killing six and injuring scores of others. That attack catapulted the issue of immigration to the top of voters’ concerns ahead of Sunday’s vote for a new Parliament.
A series of attacks by immigrants to Germany in the ensuing weeks — most recently the stabbing Friday night of a Spanish tourist visiting Berlin’s central memorial honoring the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust — ensured the issue remained at the forefront of voters’ minds, dominating debates and the political discourse.
Even though the assaults did not appear to have affected the outcome of Sunday’s elections, they stirred emotion and, for some, created a sense that the country, despite having one of the world’s lowest murder rates, according to the United Nations, was no longer safe. The government had lost control, said Gerald Knaus, a migration expert who has advised the German government and serves as chairman of the European Stability Initiative.
“What makes these attacks so explosive is that they created the feeling that the state has failed in a way,” by not being able to control migration, as Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his government had repeatedly promised to do, Mr. Knaus said.
Migration had already been at the forefront of the campaign for the hard-right party Alternative for Germany, or AfD, but it capitalized on the issue, saying that it was the only party that could ensure the system would change. The party had been polling around 20 percent; while early exit polls showed it slightly underperformed with 19.5 percent, it will still become the second largest in Parliament.
But the conservative Christian Democrats, who maintained a lead in the polls hovering just below 30 percent, provoked outrage when they relied on the AfD to try to get a proposal through Parliament that called for controls on all German borders, denying entry to migrants without papers and deporting immigrants who commit crimes.
The move raised public doubts about whether the Christian Democrats’ leader, Friedrich Merz, was fit to be chancellor, although he vowed he would never form a coalition government with the AfD. Still, Mr. Merz’s party and its sister party netted 29 percent of the vote in Sunday’s election according to early exit polls, which are historically quite accurate in Germany, putting him on track to be the country’s next leader.
Since 2022, Germany has taken in 1.2 million Ukrainians who have fled Russia’s invasion of their country. In addition, Germany has taken in 850,000 people applying for asylum, mostly from Syria and Afghanistan, since 2021. Nearly half of the country’s cities and towns, responsible for housing, educating and integrating the new arrivals, say they are overwhelmed, according to a study by the Institute for Democratic Development and Social Integration.
Christian Lindner, the leader of the liberal Free Democrats who many credit with blowing up the previous coalition, has refused to concede defeat. His party is teetering just below the 5-percent threshold needed to win seats in Parliament, according to exit polls.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTAt 83.5 percent voter participation, according to early exit polls, this election appears to have seen the highest turnout since reunification 35 years ago.
Protesters have gathered outside the AfD election party venue. Abraham Sow, a 19-year-old whose family comes from Sierra Leone, was there with friends. “If the AfD comes to power, Germany will go down,”he said.
While early exit polls show the AfD getting around 20 percent of the vote, that will still disappoint some in the party who had hoped their vote share would have gotten a boost after Elon Musk’s endorsement and recent random attacks by migrants.
Voters from across Germany’s political spectrum in Aschaffenburg seemed to agree about one thing on Sunday, saying they were unhappy with how their quaint city featured in election debates.
A series of seemingly unrelated high-profile killings carried out last year by immigrants has changed the debate in the snap parliamentary election, refocusing what had been an economy-themed campaign toward the contentious issue of migration. One of those attacks took place in Aschaffenburg.
On Jan. 22, a mentally ill former asylum seeker from Afghanistan killed two people in a park in the city, including a 2-year-old. A week later, the opposition leader and Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz, the favorite to become the next chancellor, cited the killings when he broke a longstanding taboo to vote with the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, in favor of tightening immigration controls.
That decision drew protests from liberal Germans — including by voters in Aschaffenburg on Sunday.
“It was instantly exploited and twisted, and in a way that is against my personal opinion about immigration,” said Vera Henzel, 32, who voted for the Green Party on Sunday. “The parties, and politicians, essentially used the crime for their own purposes.”
Voters from more conservative parties also said they were unhappy with how their town had been used in political discourse — but for different reasons.
Mario Saubert, a 44-year-old machine operator, lamented how people used the attack to repeat “the usual” warnings about the rise of the far right in Germany.
“You don’t want to imagine it, I mean, a small child was killed. People were horrified,” Mr. Saubert said after voting for the Bavarian Christian Social Union, which works together with Merz’s Christian Democrats. “But at the same time, it became all about ‘don’t exploit, we have to stop the shift to the right,’ which was totally inappropriate in the moment, I think.”
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTReporting from Dresden, Germany
“It’s best if the CDU/CSU gets a lot of votes and we can somehow form a coalition with as few people as possible, even if it’s not my party.”
Felix Saalfeld, 32, referring to the Christian Democrats and their sister party, the Christian Social Union.
Friedrich Merz, the man favored by early exit polls to be Germany’s next chancellor after elections on Sunday, is a conservative businessman who has never been a minister and was forced out of government years ago in a power struggle with Angela Merkel.
The leader of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, Mr. Merz earned his fortune working in the private sector before returning to politics at 63.
That business background appealed to many Germans amid the political turbulence caused in part by stagnation in one of Europe’s largest economies.
Mr. Merz, now 69, was born and still lives in the Sauerland, a district of western Germany known for hills, heavy food and picturesque nature. It was from there that he was first elected into the European Parliament in 1989 and then the German Parliament in 1994.
While he comes from the same party as Ms. Merkel, the former chancellor, Mr. Merz — a pugnacious old-school politician — is in many ways her opposite.
He rose through the ranks to lead the Christian Democrats’ parliamentary group, but was ousted by a rising star in the party — Ms. Merkel. It was then that Mr. Merz pivoted from politics and started a lucrative law career.
He got rich working as a lawyer and a lobbyist. When Ms. Merkel was getting ready to retire, Mr. Merz got back into politics. In 2018, when he returned to the political stage, Mr. Merz promised he could stem the rise of the far-right Alternative for Germany party, known as the AfD, by moving his party further right on key issues like migration and crime.
Mr. Merz re-entered Parliament in 2021 and — after two failed attempts — won the party leadership in 2022.
As party leader, however, he made a number of gaffes — like claiming in September 2023 that refugees were having their teeth redone at taxpayers’ expense while regular German patients were unable to get appointments. (The head of the German Dental Association denied this.) And his insistence that he is just a regular member of the middle class — despite significant personal means — has been mocked by some Germans who see him as being divorced from the economic reality many members of the middle class face.
Still, Mr. Merz managed to coalesce his party around him and shift it to a more traditional conservative posture after Ms. Merkel’s long tenure took the party further to the left. His business experience is considered a strength, as he promises to restore growth to the German economy.
As chancellor, as a conservative and committed trans-Atlanticist, Mr. Merz would be considered a better match for President Trump than the current Social Democratic chancellor, Olaf Scholz. Mr. Merz is also expected to lead a foreign policy more aligned with Mr. Trump’s ideas about Europe’s taking responsibility for its own defense.
Still, Mr. Merz — who is known to be assertive and direct, if a bit awkward — pushed back strongly against Mr. Trump’s latest comments siding with Russia about Ukraine, as well as what was seen as interference in Germany’s election by Vice President JD Vance when he criticized Europe for sidelining far-right voters and their parties.
Boldness is characteristic of Mr. Merz, analysts say, and reflects a conviction that Germany must be more forcefully engaged in European and global affairs. Mr. Scholz has often been criticized for his tentativeness and caution, even from within his own coalition.
Just last month, Mr. Merz showed his willingness to act brashly when he presented a migration measure and then a bill in Parliament that he knew he could pass only with the hard-right AfD, despite earlier promises never to work with them. The political maneuver did not go well: It prompted hundreds of thousands of Germans to take to the streets in protest, dissent within his party and a rare public rebuke from Ms. Merkel.
Mr. Merz has vowed to carve out a more prominent German role inside the European Union and NATO, to pursue better relations with France and Poland, and to take a tougher stance against China, which he has described as a full member of the “axis of autocracies.”
He has also promised more forthright support for Ukraine’s battle against Russia — saying, for instance, that he would provide Ukraine with Germany’s long-range cruise missile, the Taurus. And Mr. Merz has pledged that Germany will meet and surpass the current NATO target of 2 percent of gross domestic product being spent on the military for the long term.
In a recent foreign-policy speech at the Körber Foundation, Mr. Merz, a former member of the European Parliament, promised to provide German leadership in Europe, which has not been a priority for Mr. Scholz, and to establish a national security council in the chancellery.
Merz would likely face a difficult road if tasked with forging a governing coalition. But he promised swift talks to restore strong German leadership in Europe. “The outside world is not waiting for us,” he told supporters. “And it is also not waiting for lengthy coalition talks and negotiations. We must now be able to act quickly again so that we can do the right thing.”
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTChancellor Olaf Scholz told a watch party that his party, the Social Democrats, had suffered a loss. “It is bitter,” he told a crowd of hundreds gathered at his party’s headquarters after the early exit polls came out.
Friedrich Merz of the conservative Christian Democrats, who the early exit polls predict will be the next chancellor, has thanked his supporters in Berlin. “We have won it,” he said.
Alice Weidel, the AfD’s candidate for chancellor, has thanked her supporters at an election watch event, saying, “I must say one thing: our hand will always be extended for participation in a government.”Germany’s other parties have vowed never to partner with the AfD.
In order for a party to make it into the German parliament, it must receive 5 percent of the national vote. Right now, two parties are hovering right around that line in the exit polls: the pro-business Free Democrats and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, a new party rooted in the extreme left.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTIf exit polls are correct, the results could be a disappointment for the hard-right AfD, which was endorsed by Elon Musk, President Trump’s key advisor. Recent pre-election polls had suggested that they would win more than 20 percent.
According to the early exit polls, the Christian Democrats are leading with 29 percent of the vote. The Social Democrats have 16 percent and the AfD 19.5 percent, lower than what was predicted, the exit polls show.
Polls have closed in Germany.
We already have early exit polls, which are historically quite accurate in Germany. They suggest that Friedrich Merz, the candidate for the conservative Christian Democrats, is in line to be Germany’s next chancellor.
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENTReporting from Aschaffenburg, Germany
“For me it was also very important that the Greens took a clear stance on Ukraine, which many of the smaller parties have not done.”
Andreas Sickenberger, 64, a retiree who voted for the Greens.
At an election watch party for the AfD, guests were welcomed with champagne and a buffet of sandwiches, grilled meat, potato salad and beer. The AfD has been in second place in pre-election polls, but no other German party will invite it into government.
Reporting from Dresden, Germany
“He’s like the AfD 10 years ago, just saying a lot of populism.”
Niklas Adams, right, said of Friedrich Merz from the conservative Christian Democrats, who is expected to be Germany’s next chancellor.
Catherine Odom and Sam Gurwitt
Catherine Odom reported from Dresden, Germany, and Sam Guritt from Aschaffenburg, Germany.
Interference by Trump administration officials in the German campaign put off some left-leaning voters but was welcomed by others supporting the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, according to a smattering of interviews at polling stations.
Several voters in the eastern city of Dresden took note of a speech by Vice President JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference this month, when he told European leaders to stop shunning parties deemed “extreme.”
Chris Buschmann, who said he is left-leaning but declined to say how he voted, said hearing Mr. Vance made him “anxious.” Mr. Buschmann, 27, said he is worried about the rise of right-wing populism both in Germany and around the world. He worries, he said, about “history repeating itself,” referring to Germany’s Nazi past.
Tim Adams, an engineer who split his ticket between the Green Party and Die Linke, the German left party, criticized attempts by the billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk to influence the German election. Mr. Musk has endorsed the AfD and praised the party’s co-chair, Alice Weidel. Last month, he spoke at an AfD rally, telling the audience that Germany has “too much of a focus on past guilt.”
Those interventions have been “very bad for our politics,” Mr. Adams said.
Others voiced support for President Trump and his administration. Andreas Mühlbach and Anja Zeumer, both of whom voted for the AfD, said they welcomed the new American president.
In Aschaffenburg, Peter Kraus, a retired painter, said he voted for the AfD “with great joy” — and on the recommendation of Mr. Vance and Mr. Musk.
“When the American vice president says it, and Elon Musk, yeah, they have exactly my opinion,” Mr. Kraus said. “And I’m not as well-educated as those two.”
Advertisement
SKIP ADVERTISEMENT“They have the best election program and have the best perspective for the future. For a young person this is the best vote. ”
Sarah Henser, 24, a student, after voting for the Greens party.
Reporting from Dresden, Germany
“I voted for the AfD. It is the only alternative that is able to change things here.”
Andreas Mühlbach, 70, referring to the far-right Alternative for Germany.
