Germany’s conservatives won Sunday’s elections, with their leader Friedrich Merz set to become the next chancellor, followed by the far-right AfD in second place after record gains, according to exit polls.
If confirmed in the final count, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) roughly doubled its score to at least 19.5 percent, boosted by fears over immigration and security after a spate of deadly attacks blamed on asylum seekers.
Merz’s CDU/CSU alliance won at least 28.5 percent, said first exit polls from two public broadcasters, crushing the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) of the outgoing chancellor, Olaf Scholz, which were looking at around 16 percent.
Merz — a long-time party rival of ex-chancellor Angela Merkel — has vowed a crackdown on irregular immigration. He thus hopes to win back votes from the AfD and halt its rise, which has stunned many in a country still seeking to atone for its dark Nazi history.
For now, the AfD — basking in the vocal support of key allies of US President Donald Trump — is set to stay in opposition. All other parties have vowed to keep it out of power and behind a “firewall” of non-cooperation.
But its jubilant leader Alice Weidel hailed the “historic” result.
Before Merz, 69, takes over from the now caretaker chancellor Scholz, he will have to forge a new coalition government in Europe’s top economy, an often drawn-out process he has vowed to complete by Easter.
This threatens to leave Berlin paralysed for weeks to come as the Trump administration has forced head-spinning change on the world scene and among European allies, especially over the Ukraine war which enters its third year on Monday.
To build a majority government, Merz would be expected to reach out first to the SPD, though without Scholz, after he led Germany’s traditional workers’ party to its worst-ever result.
To gain enough seats, Merz may also reach out to the Greens, who scored at least 12 percent in the exit polls, although the CDU’s Bavarian sister party the CSU has so far rejected this.
Much depends on the fate of smaller parties in the complex Bundestag arithmetics, as several hovered around the five-percent cutoff mark for re-entry into the Bundestag and feared for their survival.
One of them was the liberal and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), a potential ally for the conservatives to help them gain a majority.
The final balance will also be influenced by how the smaller far-left do in the final count.
