Germany will go to the polls on Sunday, February 23 after a snap election was called in December following the collapse of the coalition government led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
Key issues for voters in this parliamentary election will be the state of the economy, migration and Ukraine’s war with Russia.
A survey on February 12 by news outlet Politico showed that the main opposition – the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) – are currently leading the polls with the support of 29 percent of voters, followed by the right-wing Alternative Fur Deutschland (AfD) which has 21 percent.
In the same poll, Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) was third with 16 percent, followed by Alliance 90/The Greens, commonly referred to as the Greens, with 12 percent.
Junior Professor Endre Borbath from the Institute of Political Science at Ruprecht-Karls-Universitat Heidelberg, told Al Jazeera that the resurgence of support for the CDU, which ruled Germany for 16 years until 2021 under former chancellor Angela Merkel before losing the last election, was “not that surprising”.
“Due to the war in Ukraine, and the resources that were required to support the Ukrainian side in this conflict, much of the government priorities had to be scaled down,” he said.
Here is everything you need to know about the upcoming election.
Why has a snap election been called in Germany?
In November 2024, Germany’s ruling coalition, a three-way alliance between the SPD, the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP), collapsed following disagreements over the country’s weak economy, which led Scholz to sack his finance minister, Christian Lindner of the FDP party.
After months of wrangling, Scholz said he fired Lindner for his obstructive behaviour over the country’s budget, and accused him of putting party before country and blocking legislation on spurious grounds, leading the FDP to quit the government.
“Too often he has engaged in small-minded party political tactics. He broke my confidence too many times,” the chancellor said of Lindner.
For his part, Lindner said the chancellor had tried to strong-arm him into breaking a constitutionally enshrined spending limit, known as the debt brake, a move that the fiscal hawk refused to support.
In December, a confidence vote was held in parliament, which Scholz lost, paving the way for the February 23 parliamentary election.
Which main parties are contesting this election?
The country has two centrist party groups; Scholz’s SPD and the conservative alliance, which includes the CDU and CSU.
In recent years, these parties have been losing support, while smaller parties from both sides of the political spectrum, including the Greens and the far-right AfD, have gained support.
Besides these players, the FDP, a pro-market, neoliberal centre-right political party, the far-left Linke, and the left-leaning populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) are also running in the election.
Who are the two main party leaders and what are they offering?
Olaf Scholz, Social Democratic Party (SPD)
Scholz, 66, the current German chancellor, is running again in the upcoming election after he was sworn in by the Bundestag in December 2021 after running as a continuity candidate following the departure of former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was chancellor for 16 years.
During Scholz’s term as chancellor, he has led the country through several domestic and European issues, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
However, as disputes between members of his three-way coalition over the national budget have intensified, Scholz’s popularity has waned. As of January, only 31 percent of people said they approved of Scholz as the country’s leader, according to polling group Statista.
Friedrich Merz, Christian Democrats
Friedrich Merz, 69, the leader of the CDU, is a familiar face within the conservative bloc as he joined the youth arm of the party as a young man and worked his way up the ranks.
From 2000 to 2002, Merz served as party leader but lost the position to Merkel, who later went on to become the first female chancellor in Germany’s history and to have the longest time in office.
But Merz was often critical of Merkel and offered what many saw as a more conservative and business-friendly approach than the former German leader, who had more centrist views and opened Germany’s borders to refugees in 2015. That move was praised by some but condemned by others, mainly on the right of the political spectrum. It has also become less popular over recent years.
So far, Merz has promised to stop what he called illegal migration, pledged “zero tolerance” on crime and said he will reverse marijuana legalisation.
With the CDU currently ahead in the polls, Merz is tipped to win the election.
But in late January, Merz drew controversy when he put a non-binding motion to Germany’s parliament to strengthen border controls and accelerate deportations. The motion passed with the support of the AfD, breaking a longstanding firewall that previously prevented mainstream parties from cooperating with the far right, and prompting Merkel to publicly criticise Merz. It marked the first time the far-right party has been relied on to pass legislation in Germany.
Despite the far-right’s help, Merz told a CDU convention earlier this month that he would not cooperate with the AfD and would “make the party as small as possible”.
But Borbath, the professor, said that breaking the firewall had helped the AfD achieve some kind of “normalisation” within German politics. It was a “warning sign”, he said.
“I think it might also reflect some kind of deliberate strategy in the sense of testing out the kind of societal climate, testing out the discursive climate, and seeing what would happen, should there be some kind of coordination with the AfD, or should the AfD be taken as a normal political party.”
How does the German electoral system work?
A general election is called every four years, with this one originally scheduled for September 2025.
On Sunday, German citizens will vote twice: once for a local member of parliament and, secondly, for a party.
This system means that alongside the winning local MP, each party also sends a number of MPs to the federal parliament (Bundestag) based on the vote share they secured in the second vote.
The second vote is considered the most important and is most widely reported on election night, as it determines the number of seats a party will receive overall in the Bundestag and the party’s strength within government.
There are 630 parliamentary seats up for grabs, which will be distributed proportionally on the second votes.
A coalition government will likely be formed as it is rare for one party to win an absolute majority. The only time a single party secured a majority was for the parliamentary term of 1957 to 1961 when the CDU/CSU won the election in West Germany.
Whichever party secures the most votes will nominate a candidate as chancellor, and the new Bundestag will vote. The candidate must secure an absolute majority to be sworn in as the country’s new leader.
What time do polling stations open?
Polling stations will be open from 8am (07:00 GMT) to 6pm (17:00 GMT) on Sunday when exit poll results are expected.
Initial results are expected to start coming in half an hour after the polls close, and the final results are usually determined overnight.
What are the key issues?
Ukraine
Most of the main parties, including the SPD, CDU and the Greens are in favour of providing aid to Ukraine amid its almost three-year war with Russia, but Scholz has taken a slightly more cautious approach than the others and also emphasises the need for diplomacy.
Conversely, the AfD and the BSW have called for an end to weapons deliveries to Ukraine and a resumption of relations with Moscow.
Germany is the second-highest supporter of Ukraine’s war efforts after the United States.
According to the German government, in 2024 Germany provided military assistance to Ukraine worth approximately 7.1 billion euros ($7.4bn).
Last week, the German news broadcaster, ZDF, published a poll that found that 67 percent of Germans support the government’s military support for Ukraine.
Economy
The issue of whether to reform Germany’s constitutionally enshrined debt brake to allow for increased public spending is a central issue for this election.
According to German law, the state may only spend as much money as it has collected in taxes.
But the debt break allows for the government to borrow up to 0.35 percent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP) in emergency situations, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, the Greens and Scholz have called for the reform of the debt brake to enable greater public spending.
Merz has signalled some openness to this but remains cautious. He told a televised debate with Scholz last week: “I have always said that you can discuss this, but definitely not at first.
“First comes the savings potential, growth and also the budget reallocations that are urgently needed,” he said.
The AfD and the FDP are staunch defenders of the limit on public borrowing.
The AfD also wants Germany to stop using the euro, reintroduce the Deutschmark, the national currency last used in 2002, and potentially leave the European Union.
Migration
Nearly all parties have called for stricter measures on migration following a number of attacks on crowds, such as an incident in December in which a Saudi-born psychiatrist drove into a Christmas market, killing five people.
- The CDU has called for stricter border controls and for limits on family reunification and naturalisation for refugees.
- The far-right AfD has called for borders to be closed and for the right of family reunification to be removed for asylum seekers.
- The SPD has pushed for enforcing stricter border controls and deportations of people who have entered the country through irregular means, for example, by boat. However, at the same time, it also wants to bring in more foreign skilled workers.
- The Green Party is a lone voice maintaining an open-door asylum policy and pushing for state-backed sea rescue initiatives, simplifying family reunification and promoting the integration of refugees into German society.
Borbath said, however, that after an Afghan asylum seeker drove a car into a crowd in Munich on Thursday, most parties are likely to toughen their stance on immigration.
“There’s just no party that says ‘yes, migration is needed’ and that ‘migration is good’ … So I think, in that sense, the effect of the AfD is much more visible than in the policy-making process … this normalisation of AfD, of immigration critical voices that were previously mostly linked to the AfD, [is] becoming much more widespread and normalised and taken over also by centre-left or left-wing forces,” he said.
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