Europe digital editor in Berlin

Friedrich Merz’s conservatives have received, however Germany’s 2025 election has thrown up some necessary and engaging tales that reveal a rustic in flux.
Different for Germany, or AfD, has doubled its help in simply 4 years to twenty.8%, and has unfold out from its help base within the east to grow to be the second greatest political power in parliament.
In the meantime, outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD had its worst efficiency in many years, solely securing 16.4% of the vote.
Listed here are 5 key takeaways.
AfD dominant in east, spreading to the west
Take a look at an election outcomes map of Germany, and you possibly can virtually have travelled again in time to the Chilly Battle, when an iron curtain divided communist East Germany from the west.
Within the east it is a swathe of AfD gentle blue, aside from pockets like Berlin and half of Leipzig. Within the west the overwhelming majority has turned conservative black, particularly in Bavaria the place Merz’s conservative sister social gathering, the CSU, dominates the panorama.
However the AfD is spreading within the west too, and political loyalty to the outdated mainstream events has gone.
For one in 5 Germans it has grow to be normalised. “They’re simply regular individuals,” mentioned one younger man of immigrant origin in Duisburg, a metropolis in western Germany’s outdated industrial heartland.

Though it got here second, the AfD is blocked from being a part of the subsequent authorities due to a “firewall” – or Brandmauer – operated by Germany’s fundamental events, who don’t co-operate with any social gathering seen as extremist for the reason that finish of World Battle Two.
The AfD’s chief Alice Weidel insists it’s a libertarian, conservative motion, not racist. Its massive improve in public help has coincided with a sequence of lethal assaults up to now 9 months, all allegedly by immigrants.
The AfD has embraced a extremely controversial coverage referred to as “remigration”, which it defines as deporting migrants who’ve dedicated crimes. However the time period may seek advice from the mass deportation of migrants and their descendants.
In Could 2024 a German courtroom rejected an AfD enchantment in opposition to a ruling classifying it as a suspected far-right extremist organisation. Judges discovered that the AfD had “positions that disparage the democratic order and are incompatible with the precept of democracy”.
In three German states within the east – Thuringia, Saxony-Anhalt and Saxony – home intelligence has designated the AfD as right-wing extremist.
A number one AfD determine in Thuringia, Björn Höcke, has twice been convicted of utilizing a banned Nazi slogan “Alles für Deutschland” – all the pieces for Germany. Alice Weidel supporters have chanted her title throughout the election marketing campaign, utilizing the phrase “Alice für Deutschland”.
Germans voted in greatest turnout for 40 years
Not since 1987 has turnout been as excessive as 82.5% in a German election, and that was three years earlier than reunification of east and west.
4 years in the past it was 76.6%.
Put merely, greater than 4 in each 5 of Germany’s 59.2 million voters turned out.
It displays simply how energised Germans have been by this election, which comes at a pivotal second for his or her nation. There have been 9 TV debates within the last stretch of the marketing campaign, however that mirrored the broad curiosity of the viewers.
Throughout for leaders of collapsed authorities
The three-party authorities of outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz fell aside on the finish of final 12 months, and inside 24 hours of Sunday’s election, all three leaders have mentioned they’re leaving the entrance line of politics.
The chief of the financial liberals, the FDP, was first. Christian Lindner has led his social gathering for 11 years. However it didn’t get any MPs elected and Lindner has mentioned he is leaving politics after 25 years.
It was Lindner’s refusal to compromise on debt guidelines that first introduced the federal government down, after which despatched his social gathering into the wilderness.
Though Scholz will stay as chancellor till the subsequent authorities is shaped, he will not be collaborating in coalition talks and will probably be leaving frontline politics.
Greens Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck can also be leaving frontline politics after his social gathering fell beneath 12% within the election.
TikTok era hauls Left again from useless
Till a couple of weeks in the past, the Left social gathering seemed doomed when one in all its main lights, Sahra Wagenknecht, went off and based her personal, extra populist, social gathering with eight different MPs.
Wagenknecht’s reputation soared for some time as head of her BSW social gathering, however in the end fell just under the 5% threshold for moving into parliament.
The story was very completely different for the Left (Die Linke), which got here again from the useless with an impressed social medial marketing campaign.
Heidi Reichinnek, Die Linke’s co-chair, went viral after she gave a speech enthusiastically defending the firewall in opposition to the AfD. She now has 580,000 followers on TikTok and her submit has attracted seven million views.
Her social gathering secured slightly below 9% of the vote.
Younger go left and proper, outdated persist with centre
Die Linke’s viral movies helped safe 1 / 4 of the 18-24 vote, and the AfD weren’t far behind with 21%, in keeping with surveys by ARD TV.
Alice Weidel was the largest hit on social media throughout the election, even greater than Heidi Reichinnek. She has attracted greater than 935,000 followers on TikTok.
For the over-35s, it was the Christian Democrats who received out, and extra males than ladies.