Germany Elections - 2025
Germany held a federal election for the Bundestag on 23 February 2025. Preliminary results showed the conservative bloc made up of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Christian Social Union (CSU), to have won the election with 28.5% of the vote. This was followed by the strongest showing ever for the far-right AfD party which secured 20.8%, but nonetheless a distant second place in spite of vocal support for Elon Musk and other far-right leaders across the globe. Despite this score, AfD was expected to be excluded from any government-forming talks as it was being shunned by all the other major German political parties. The Social Democratic Party (SPD) received 16.5% of the votes; a drop of nearly 10 percentage points from the previous elections held four years prior. The Greens came in fourth position with 11.6%.
Germany approved the date of parliamentary elections (Bundestag) in the country. Germans were initially scheduled to vote for new deputies on September 28, 2025, but the collpase of the governing coalition led the elections to be brought forward to 23 February 2025. German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier signed the decree on the elections on August 23. The Bundestag is the constitutional and legislative body at the federal level in Germany. The only constitutional body in the political system of the Federal Republic of Germany, elected by all citizens of the country. The most important functions of the Bundestag are the adoption of laws and the election of the Federal Chancellor.
Scholz said 06 November 2024 he would seek a vote of confidence by January 15 so lawmakers can decide whether to call early elections by March – about half a year ahead of a previously scheduled September 2025 vote. A chancellor can call for a confidence vote in the Bundestag to confirm whether he or she still has sufficient parliamentary support. After the break-up of the coalition, only SPD and Green MPs will vote for Scholz, which means he will fail to garner a majority. If a chancellor fails to win a majority, they can formally ask the president to dissolve the Bundestag within 21 days. Following the dissolution of parliament, new elections must be held within 60 days.
Germany is a constitutional democracy. Citizens choose their representatives periodically in free and fair multiparty elections. The second legislative chamber, the Federal Council (Bundesrat), represents the 16 states at the federal level and is composed of members of the state governments. The country’s 16 states exercise considerable autonomy, including concerning law enforcement and education. The elections for the Bundestag in 2021 were considered free and fair.
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: crimes involving violence motivated by antisemitism, crimes involving violence targeting members of ethnic or religious minority groups motivated by anti-Muslim hatred, xenophobia, or other forms of right-wing extremism, and crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or intersex persons. The government took steps to investigate, prosecute, and punish officials in the security services and elsewhere in government that committed human rights abuses or engaged in corruption.
Political parties generally operated without restriction or outside interference unless authorities deemed them a threat to the federal constitution. When federal authorities perceive such a threat, they may petition the Federal Constitutional Court to ban the party. By law each political party receives federal public funding commensurate with the party’s election results in state, national, and European elections. The constitution, however, denies public funding to extremist parties that seek to undermine the constitution.
Early elections were held in 1972, 1983 and 2005. The German Bundestag does not have the right to dissolve itself. For the legislative term of the Bundestag to end prematurely, the Federal President has to dissolve the Bundestag. The Basic Law (GG) provides for two such cases. Under Article 63 (4) of the Basic Law (Election of the Federal Chancellor) the Federal President himself may dissolve the Bundestag only if a Chancellor has not obtained the absolute majority of the members’ votes. Article 68 of the Basic Law stipulates that “the Federal President, upon the proposal of the Federal Chancellor, may dissolve the Bundestag within twenty-one days” if a motion of the Federal Chancellor for a vote of confidence is not supported by the majority of the members of the Bundestag. The right of dissolution will lapse as soon as the Bundestag elects another Federal Chancellor with the majority of its members.
From unreliable passenger rail to long waits for public services, too few appointment slots to see doctors and not enough room in preschools, German institutions seem increasingly unable to meet the everyday needs of the population they serve. That hasn't gone unnoticed by the general public. Just 27% of people in Germany have the sense the state is able to fulfill its responsibilities. That is the overall result of a survey by the German Civil Service Federation (dbb), released 15 August 2023. The figure is a new low. The dbb conducts the survey annually. While public administration saw a boost in confidence during the pandemic years 2020 and 2021 — with 56% and 45% of respondents, respectively, expressing confidence in the state's functions — the latest figures were seven percentage points lower than in 2019, the final year before the pandemic.
Olaf Scholz, had been criticized for addressing the public too little. He isn't seen putting a stop to policy disagreements among his center-left coalition government of Social Democrats (SPD), Greens and neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP), which at least appear to be mired in continuous internal squabbling. "We are living in a time in which the public needs orientation and leadership," said Ulrich Silberbach, the dbb chairperson. "We have someone in the chancellery who once said, 'Those who ask leadership from me, get it.' But the public does not seem to have registered that."
Public attitudes are shaped not only by demonstrable events but also by media representation and political rhetoric. At the federal level, the opposition effectively portrayed the government as being too distracted with internal squabbling and unable to lead. Whether on combating greenhouse gas emissions or reforming social benefits, several policy goals either failed to make it into law or required significant amendments to pass.
The "Politbarometer" poll published 18 August 2023 by Germany's Forschungsgruppe Wahlen (Elections Research Group) on behalf of the public broadcaster ZDF also showed voter dissatisfaction with Scholz. It found that 51% were unhappy with his performance in office and that 58% thought the government was doing a poor job. One silver lining for the chancellor was just over half of Germans thought a government led by the opposition conservatives would not do any better. There was historically weak support for Scholz's SPD, too. Only 19% said they would vote for the party if an election was imminent, with the Greens on 15% and the FDP on 7%. The CDU/CSU bloc scored 26% voter support in the poll, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) mustered 19%.
A poll, for the mass-circulation newspaper Bild, published 19 August 2023, found as many as 64% of Germans who answered in the survey said a change of government would make the country a better place. Only 22% of those surveyed by the polling agency INSA said they thought an election would not benefit Germany. The same percentage said they were satisfied with the work of Olaf Scholz as chancellor, with 70% saying they were not.
Pollsters also asked about the so-called "traffic light" coalition of center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the neoliberal Free Democrats (FDP). Voters were asked how it measured up against Chancellor Angela Merkel's "Grand Coalition" of conservative Christian Democrats/Christian Socialists (CDU/CSU) and the SPD. Only 10% said the current coalition was doing better, with 49% viewing it as worse. Some 28% said the result was mixed depending on policy areas.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced his plans to run for the government’s top post again in 2025. He also dismissed his party’s poor election results as a “stimulus” to do better during a two-hour media conference in Berlin 24 July 2024. Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) suffered its worst nationwide election result in European Parliament elections in early June, where it got just under 14% of the votes. The party’s rating also stands at around 14%, according to ARD Deutschlandtrend survey results published in early July.
Scholz claimed his party is “determined to go into the next federal election campaign together and to win.” He admitted that while poll results were “not good” his party would be able to show that the SPD-led government made the right decisions during its tenure and would “succeed in convincing everyone of this.”
When asked whether he himself would follow the footsteps of US President Joe Biden, who recently abandoned his 2024 re-election bid, Scholz maintained he was still determined to run and win in 2025. “I will run for chancellor to become the chancellor again,” he said. Under the German election system, a party that gets most votes at the federal parliamentary election normally gets a chance to form a government, usually in a coalition with other parties. Scholz’s Social Democrats lead the present coalition which also includes the Greens and the Free Democratic Party.
Most major parties usually name their chancellor candidates ahead of the vote as part of their election campaign. Scholz insisted his party is “very united.” Recent poll results published by the German media paint another picture. According to a survey conducted in early July, only a third of SPD members believe Scholz should run again as the party’s candidate for chancellor, with 67% saying that a different candidate would improve the party’s chances in the upcoming elections.
A third of party members named Defense Minister Boris Pistorius as a suitable candidate for leadership. More than a half of the SPD members (51%) believe the party is in a serious crisis, according to a Forsa Institute on behalf of the RND media outlet. Still, as many as 55% of SPD members also stated they were either “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with Scholz. The poll was conducted between July 8 and July 12 and involved 1,001 SPD members.
Data presented by the German private online statistics aggregator, Statista, showed that Scholz’s popular support has hit one of its lowest points since early 2022, with only 28% of Germans assessing his work as a chancellor positively and 67% viewing it negatively in June 21024.
The devastating defeats the Social-Democratic party and its 'traffic-light' coalition partners – the Greens and the market-liberal Free Democrats – suffered in regional elections in Thuringia and Saxony were just the tip of the iceberg, as polls consistently show: A whopping 77% of Germans consider their current leader “führungsschwach” (weak at, well, leading); his personal “popularity” – really, unpopularity – rating has just collapsed from a dismal 14th to a comically catastrophic 18th place. Only 23% want him to even try to run for office again, and even in his own party the majority is against the idea.
And it was not just him alone but his team as well: 71% of Germans think his government is doing a bad job. A difficult – and foul – 2025 budget compromise achieved in July within Scholz’s fractious coalition did not inspire hope: Only 7% of voters believed that the coalition “partners” would work together more effectively now, 10% thought things would only get worse, and 79% that they’d stay just as dire as they were. While Scholz’s government had promised that the new budget would finally jolt the ailing German economy back to life, 75% of Germans didn’t believe in that promise.
The protest parties from the left and the far right were becoming increasingly stronger. In none of the states that voted in September - Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg - was a government formed from the previous parties of the democratic center.
By September 2024 the FDP was doing everything it can to finally be thrown out: it no longer adhered to anything that the traffic light parties agreed on together almost three years ago. It was blocking hearings on draft bills in ministries run by the SPD, such as the "Collective Bargaining Act"; in Bundestag sessions it contradicted laws that it itself helped to pass in the cabinet, such as the last pension reform; it was bringing a federal budget from the Finance Ministry it runs to the Bundestag that is once again suspected of being unconstitutional.
Germany's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) opposition party called on Chancellor Olaf Scholz to seek a vote of confidence within a week after the ruling coalition fell apart 06 November 2024 with Scholz's shock dismissal of his finance minister. Scholz had promised to put his government to a confidence vote by January 15, 2025. Speaking after a meeting of his parliamentary group, CDU chairman Friedrich Merz said Scholz's three-party coalition with the Greens and the Free Democrats (FDP) had "failed". After months of bitter infighting, Scholz's fractious three-way coalition finally broke apart on Wednesday night after the chancellor sacked his finance minister Christian Lindner from the FDP. The shock move left the chancellor's SPD and the Greens ruling in a precarious minority government at a time when Germany faced multiple domestic and international crises. The FDP, the smallest party in the coalition, had long disagreed with the SPD and the Greens on a range of issues, most strikingly how to carve up a tight budget and jumpstart the troubled German economy.
The SPD and Greens poll ratings were abysmal and the coalition recently managed to become the most unpopular government in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. But they want to push through a few more laws before the new elections. The chancellor and his Economics Minister and Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck want to stick to their timetable. They point out that the SPD and Greens were not a "caretaker coalition," but a minority government and therefore fully capable of acting internationally. Important political projects were still in the pipeline: Tax relief for medium and low-income earners is on the agenda, as well as SPD-Greens plans to bolster the statutory pension system. Also on the list is a reform of immigration and asylum policies, with Scholz intending to rapidly implement the rules of the Common European Asylum System.
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the regional Christian Social Union (CSU) were not only the largest opposition bloc in the current parliament, they were also, according to current polls, most likely to emerge from new elections as the strongest force. CDU leader Friedrich Merz who is tipped to become Germany's next chancellor urged swift action. "The government no longer has a majority in the German Bundestag and so we have to call on the Federal Chancellor — with a unanimous decision by the CDU/CSU parliamentary group — to call a vote of confidence immediately, at the beginning of next week at the latest," he said.
President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, on the other hand, urged prudence. "Many people in our country are worried about the uncertain political situation in our country, in Europe, in the world, even after the elections in the US," Steinmeier said in Berlin. "This is no time for tactics and skirmishes, it is the time for reason and responsibility. I expect all those responsible to do justice to the magnitude of the challenges." Steinmeier was a leading Social Democrat minister and held other political offices for around 18 years before he became president in 2017. Since then, his SPD membership has been suspended.
Olaf Scholz was not a popular figure in Germany now; he’s widely discredited and likely to lose the election. One of the reasons he’s unpopular is his response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He’s talked about transforming Germany’s geopolitics and Germany’s position, and he has achieved some significant successes in overcoming Germany’s historical pacifism and reluctance to provide weapons to European states. But at the same time, his response has been inadequate. He’s been too cautious and reluctant to give Ukraine the capability to strike back inside Russia. He’s also opposed Ukraine’s NATO membership, and he’s been very cautious about addressing Russia, essentially legitimizing Russia’s nuclear blackmail.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on 16 December 2024 lost a confidence vote in parliament, paving the way for snap elections in February intended to lead the country out of a political crisis triggered by the collapse of his coalition. Scholz won the support of 207 lawmakers in the 733-seat lower house, or Bundestag, while 394 voted against him and 116 abstained. That left him far short of the majority of 367 needed to win.
Scholz leads a minority government after his unpopular and notoriously rancorous three-party coalition collapsed on November 6 when he fired his finance minister in a dispute over how to revitalize Germany’s stagnant economy. Leaders of several major parties then agreed that a parliamentary election should be held on February 23, seven months earlier than originally planned. Once parliament is dissolved, the election must be held within 60 days.
Polls showed Scholz’s party trailing well behind center-right challenger Friedrich Merz’s main opposition Union bloc, which is in the lead. Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck of the environmentalist Greens, the remaining partner in Scholz’s government, is also bidding for the top job — though his party is further back.
As Europe’s largest economy grapples with inflation, high energy costs, and a general sense that “liberal elites” have grown out of touch, more radical parties on both the right and left are seizing the moment. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) is gaining ground almost daily, wooing voters who feel abandoned by the mainstream, while Sahra Wagenknecht, a controversial leftist, formed a new party that could siphon off working-class support from traditional parties. A major factor behind this upheaval is Germany’s stuttering economy. After decades of relying on relatively cheap Russian gas to fuel its industries and heat its homes, the sudden cut-off has left the country scrambling. Energy bills have skyrocketed, hitting vulnerable households the hardest, and making everyday life more expensive for everyone. Inflation, partially exacerbated by global trends, has eroded purchasing power and confidence in the traditional parties that were expected to safeguard economic prosperity. As factory orders dip and small businesses struggle to stay afloat, voters are growing frustrated. Wagenknecht, who made her name in the Left Party (Die Linke) before breaking away, is set on pulling disillusioned voters from across the political spectrum. Fiercely critical of deregulated markets and neoliberal orthodoxies, she accuses Germany’s mainstream leaders of abandoning true social justice in favor of what she sees as global corporate interests. For some on the left, who feel the Social Democrats and the Greens have lost touch with working-class realities, her new party offers a tantalizing alternative. By merging left-populist rhetoric with sharp critiques of rising living costs, Wagenknecht might peel away the very voters that kept the center-left afloat for years. Friedrich Merz, who leads the center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and is often seen as Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s principal rival, faces headwinds from unexpected quarters. Musk’s criticism of Merz has drawn attention to a rift between conventional conservatism and the disruptive style championed by a new generation of influential voices. Worse for Merz, Trump’s return to the presidency in the United States signals that a more populist brand of politics may gain transatlantic support. During his first term, Trump’s ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, made headlines by engaging openly with right-leaning German politicians, including members of the AfD. Now, with a second Trump administration, Washington could well encourage a similar or even more robust alignment with populist forces in Berlin.
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