Folko Mueller
Posted March 4, 2025
On February 23, 2025, Germany held a snap general election for only the fourth time in its post-World War II history. The original date for the general election would have been September 28 of this year. However, the governing coalition of Social Democrats (SPD), Liberals (FDP, these days, liberal only in an economic context, i.e., neoliberal), and Greens — also referred to as an “Ampel” or traffic light coalition, due to the colors of the respective parties — collapsed on November 6, 2024.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) dismissed Finance Minister Christian Lindner (FDP) for not supporting the planned 2025 federal budget. All but one of the remaining FDP ministers subsequently resigned and entered the opposition, leaving an SPD-Greens minority government. As a result, Scholz was forced to seek a vote of confidence, which he lost, thus triggering the snap election. Two big German newspapers later reported that the FDP had planned this provocation to break with the coalition.
The results of the election were shocking, yet by and large to be expected. With 28.2%, the Christian Democrats (CDU) got the most votes. This is not a huge surprise, since it wasn’t part of the governing coalition and thus the only remaining mainstream alternative for voters who wanted change. The FDP committed political suicide, since the forced breakup of the coalition and resulting election left them at 4.3%, or short of the 5% hurdle needed for parliamentary representation. It looks like the leadership team will resign and may even return to the private sector.
The SPD, which led the governing coalition, got severely beaten up and received the lowest voter approval in a general election since World War II, with 16.41%. We have to remember that the SPD was historically one of the two “Volksparteien” or people’s parties, which at its peak during the Willy Brandt days received over 45% in the 1972 election.
The current party leadership has indicated it will not participate in a new coalition government. However, personnel changes are already underway. It looks like Lars Klingbeil will replace Olaf Scholz as faction leader. This is in part a generational change as well — Klingbeil is 47 years old, whereas Scholz is almost 20 years older. However, Klingbeil belongs to the right wing of the party, known in German as “Seeheimer Kreis” or Seeheim Circle, named after its meeting place. The group embraces neoliberal policies similar to Blairites in the UK. Scholz, on the other hand, came at least historically out of the youth section of the SPD (“Jusos” or young socialists) and was part of the Marxist wing within it, although he has long distanced himself from this past.
The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), made up of people Wagenknecht poached from Die Linke just over a year ago, got 4.97% of the vote and thus barely missed the 5% hurdle. There has been some noise regarding potential lawsuits by the BSW to contest this electoral outcome, but they are not expected to go anywhere. One can only hope that Wagenknecht will draw personal conclusions and retire from German politics. Her mix of a traditional left platform heavily peppered with semi-Stalinist and right-populist slogans will not be missed. We have previously discussed the BSW platform and how it backfired in state elections in detail in A dark moment in contemporary German history.
Die Linke
Everybody had written the Left Party off based on its very poor results in the last general election, where it missed the 5% hurdle and only gained parliamentary seats through winning three direct mandates. The expectations within the party were so low that towards the end of last year, Gregor Gysi, one of the most prominent old guard members of the party, started a campaign labeled “Silver Locks Mission.” The goal was to ensure the election of himself and two other senior party members, Dietmar Bartsch and Bodo Ramelow, via direct mandates, since jumping the 5% hurdle appeared to be unattainable.
However, at the end of the day, the 77-year old’s pessimistic expectations were far exceeded. While Dietmar Bartsch didn’t win his direct mandate, Die Linke got six direct mandates in total, while easily clearing the 5% hurdle with almost 8.8%.
A big part of this success story was the party’s lead candidate, Heidi Reichinnek. At 36 years young, with a big social media presence, she was able to attract a lot of younger voters. An estimated 29 million people saw her outraged speech in the Bundestag on social media after the CDU/CSU voted together with the AfD for a motion to tighten migration policy. Die Linke was the preferred choice for first-time voters and scored higher than any other party among voters aged 18-24 with 25%, and even higher among young women in urban centers with 35%.
The party has also seen a massive influx of young, new members recently, with an average age of 28 years. This is partly due to the increased polarization of German society but also because the party is becoming more attractive again for political newcomers, since the infighting is nowhere near as bad and public as it was when Wagenknecht was still in it. As co-chair Jan van Aken put it: “200 had to go so that 20,000 new ones could come.”
Die Linke’s election campaign was focused on core leftwing issues like social justice and associated economic policies such as rent control. The party was not afraid of class struggle and called out the elites and billionaires who are faring well, while ordinary German working families are having a rough time. Finally, Die Linke engaged in a massive outreach campaign, with overflowing town hall meetings all over the country, as well as door-to-door campaigns.
AfD
Unfortunately, the second-largest winner of young voters in Germany was the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). This too shows the highly polarized environment Germany is currently facing. My previous article, A dark moment in contemporary German history, analyzes why the AfD appeals to young people in Eastern Germany.
Even 30+ years after reunification, there remains a significant economic gap between West and East Germany. In 2022, the gross domestic product in West Germany amounted to around 3.25 trillion euros, while in East Germany the gross domestic product was around 435.6 billion euros. Unemployment levels remain higher in the East than in the West, while average wages are lower, partially due to a politically motivated move to reduce collective bargaining coverage in East Germany after reunification.
With Germany in recession for the second year in a row, it is unsurprising that voters in the East are looking to challenge the status quo from both the left and right. What is shocking, however, is how the AfD managed to pretty much sweep all of Eastern Germany, as shown in this map of the distribution of the Zweitstimme, the second vote on the ballot, with which you vote for a party ticket, as opposed to a candidate (direct mandate) in the first vote.
While Die Linke still has some strongholds in the East, especially in and around Berlin, and generally fares well there, the AfD is now basically the new “Voice of the East.” What is even more concerning is that the AfD has literally doubled its votes since the last general election and landed at 20.8% with 152 seats! One not insignificant factor for the AfD’s success was blatant foreign meddling.
The X-factor
One would have to go back to the days of direct military rule by the U.S. and its allies right after World War II to find more significant meddling in Germany’s internal affairs than the interference in Germany’s election campaign by Elon Musk. This, despite the fact that the unelected billionaire has no significant knowledge of the German political landscape, and himself admitted that until about a year ago, he “didn’t know [the] AfD from a hole in the ground.”
Since then, Musk has supported the party openly in many ways. He invited AfD leader Alice Weidel on to his social media platform X for a livestream interview, which at its peak was followed by over 200,000 subscribers, spoke via video link at an AfD congress earlier this year, and wrote an op-ed in favor of the AfD for a conservative German newspaper.
Musk has said, “Only the AfD can save Germany,” while insulting high-ranking German officials, including the chancellor and the head of state (both Social Democrats), as well as other politicians and officeholders.
While it is hard to quantify the benefit the AfD got from this, getting such open support from one of the richest and most powerful people on earth undoubtedly gave the party a reputational boost. It lifts the stigma that the AfD had earned previously during the “remigration” scandal (see Never again is right now!), trivializes the fascist, hard-right wing of the party, and normalizes the party overall by bringing it back into mainstream political discourse.
Conclusion
The concern is not only that the AfD is here to stay, but that it will have a real impact on German politics over the next four years and most likely beyond. U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who also met with AfD leader Weidel prior to the election, is exerting pressure on Christian Democrats to enter into a coalition with the AfD.
While this will most likely not happen this time around, the democratic-minded majority of Germany will have to remain alert. CDU leader Friedrich Merz is slowly chipping away at his self-proclaimed “firewall” between his party and the AfD. This has been evident at a municipal level in East Germany for some time, but has now appeared at the federal level with the recent joint anti-immigration motion. If the AfD continues to poll as high as it has, it is simply a matter of time before the Conservatives cave.
Neighboring Austria would be a good reference point for that. After Jörg Haider, who started his political career in the Austrian province of Carinthia, took over the reins of the FPÖ (Freedom Party of Austria) in the mid-1980s, he moved the party sharply to the right. While the party was previously closer to other (neo)liberal parties in terms of political outlook, it now became nationalist, xenophobic and eurosceptic. Its popularity rose.
When it came in second in the 1999 election, behind only the Social Democrats, and negotiations for a second “grand coalition” of Social Democrats and Conservatives failed, the conservative party ÖVP (Austrian People’s Party) entered into a coalition with the FPÖ, which sparked protests both in and outside Austria. The 2017 elections saw a repeat of this coalition, and in the general election of September 2024 the FPÖ received the most votes, with 29%. Coalition talks with the ÖVP followed, but appear to have collapsed for now.
As Die Linke’s revolutionary socialist current Marx21 points out: “Obviously, the fight against fascism in the form of the AfD is and remains one of the most pressing tasks of our time – not only for leftists, but for all anti-fascists in this country who feel committed to the oath of Buchenwald: Never again!”
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