The conservatives of the German opposition leader, Friedrich Merz, were ongoing for a mediocre victory in a national election on Sunday, while the alternative for Germany almost doubled their support, the strongest for a party of extreme right since the Second War World, they showed projections.
Foreign Minister Olaf Scholz admitted the defeat for his social democrats on the center after what he called “a result of the bitter elections.”
The projections for public television Ard and ZDF showed that their party ended in third place with its worst post -war result in a national parliamentary election.
It was not immediately clear how easy it will be for Merz gathering a coalition government.
The election took place seven months earlier than originally planned after the unpopular coalition of Scholz collapsed in November, three years in a term that was increasingly tarnished by internal struggles. There was a generalized discontent and not much enthusiasm for any of the candidates.
The projections, based on the output surveys and the partial counting, provide support to the Merz union block in just under 29% and alternative for Germany, or AFD, approximately 20%, approximately twice as much as its result of 2021 .
They present support for Scholz's social democrats in just over 16%, much lower than in the last elections. The environmental green, their remaining partners in the outgoing government, had 12-13%.
Of three smaller games, one, the hard left -wing left party seemed safe to win seats in Parliament with up to 9% of the votes. Two other parties, the Democrats without business and the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, were around the 5% support threshold to win seats.
If Merz will need one or two partners to form a coalition, it will depend on how many parties arrive at Parliament.
“I am aware of responsibility,” said Merz. “I am also aware of the scale of the task that is now ahead of us. I address it with the greatest respect, and I know it will not be easy. ”
“The world is not waiting for us, and is not waiting for the conversations and negotiations of the coalition long drawn,” Cheering supporters told. “Now we must be able to act quickly again.”
The candidate for AFD Chancellor Alice Weidel, said “we have become the second most leading force.”
She said her party is “open for coalition negotiations” with Merz's party, and that “otherwise, a policy change in Germany is not possible.” But Merz has repeatedly ruled out and categorically working with AFD, as well as other conventional parts.
The general secretary of the Social Democrats, Matthias Miersch, suggested that defeat was not a surprise after three years of the unpopular government. “This election was not lost in the last eight weeks,” he said.
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The election was dominated by the concerns about the stagnation of the years of the largest economy in Europe and with pressure to stop migration. It took place in a context of growing uncertainty about the future of Ukraine and the European Alliance with the United States.
Germany is the most populous country of the European Union of 27 nations and main member of NATO. It has been the second largest arms supplier in Ukraine, after the United States, it will be central to configuration of the continent response to the challenges of the coming years, including the foreign and commercial confrontation policy of the Trump administration.
More than 59 million people in the Nation of 84 million were eligible to choose the 630 members of the Chamber of Representatives of Parliament, the Bundestag, which will take its seats under the glass dome of the historic Reichstag building in Berlin.
Why is support for AFD emerging?
AFD first entered the national Parliament of Germany eight years ago thoroughly with the arrival of a large number of migrants in the mid -2010, and curbing migration remains its characteristic theme.
But the party has also proven an expert in taking advantage of other issues: Germany's departure from fossil fuel years.
The party was founded in 2013 and initially focused on the opposition to the bailouts of countries with difficulties in the Eurozone debt crisis, measures that the then Foreign Minister Angela Merkel described as “without alternative.”
Over the years, AFD became more radical and repeatedly changed the leaders. It was Merkel's decision in 2015 to allow in a large number of migrants who supercharged as a political force. In the 2017 national elections, he won 12.6% of the votes, take a seat in the German Parliament for the first time.
After returning to Parliament in 2021 with a reduced support of 10.3%, AFD collected strength when the government of the leftist Olaf Scholz's left beat a series of crisis and finally collapsed.
Germany saw a wave of protests a year ago by a report that right -wing extremists gathered to discuss the deportation of millions of immigrants, including some with German citizenship, and that AFD members were present.
But that did not do long -term damage to AFD surveys. He ended second in the elections of the European Parliament in June, and in September, the best known figure in his most difficult law, Björn Höcke, said the first extreme right -wing victory in a state election in Germany after the second World War.
AFD entered Sunday's elections with renewed trust and radical language, and the surveys put it secondly with approximately 20% support. Weidel, his first candidate for the Chancellor, has adopted the politically charged “remigization”, since the party requires large -scale deportations of people without legal right to be in Germany.
AFD asks the immediate survey of sanctions against Russia and opposes weapons deliveries to Ukraine. He wants Germany to reintroduce a national currency and that the European Union becomes a “more loose European Association”, although it is not explicitly advocating the block of 27 nations.
The German National Intelligence Agency has the party under observation for suspicion of right -wing extremism. The branches of the AFD in three Eastern states are designated “proven right”. AFD strongly opposes these evaluations and rejects any association with the Nazi past. Höcke has appealed two sentences for knowing a Nazi slogan in a political event.
AFD has support in Germany and is represented in all but two of the 16 state legislatures, but the party is stronger in the east previously communist and less prosperous.
It has a unique ability to take issues “that other parties do not handle with this clarity, with this intensity, with this radicalism and this emotionality,” said Wolfgang Schroeder, professor of Political Science at the Center for Social Sciences of Berlin. “And besides that, it is an Internet party and from the beginning he used the emotionalizing power of the Internet for his own communication, much better than all the other German holidays together.”
That has helped him perform strongly among young voters in recent regional elections. The party portrays itself as an anti-establishment force in a moment of low confidence in politicians.
Schroeder described him as “something like a aircraft carrier for resentment and anger.”
The promotion of AFD has coincided with that of the extreme right parties in many other European countries, including the Austrian Liberty Party and the national demonstration in France, with which it has a lot of common land. Orbán described Weidel this month as “the future of Germany.”
However, it is not part of the patriots group of these parties for Europe in the European Parliament after some tensions before the EU elections last year. AFD was expelled from one of the group's predecessors after his main candidate at that time, Maximilian Krah, said not all the men of the Nazis SS “were necessarily criminal.”
Musk, a technological billionaire and close ally of the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has stated that “only AFD can save Germany.” He held a live conversation in X with Weidel and appeared live by video link in an AFD campaign rally.
In that rally, Weidel promised to “make Germany great again” in an echo of the slogan of “Make America Great Again” by Trump.
Nine days before the elections, Vance met with Weidel after a speech before the Munich Security Conference in which he gave lectures to European leaders about democracy and freedom of expression and declared that “there is no space for Firewalls ” The refusal of conventional German parties to work with AFD is often known as the “Firewall.”