There are two key takeaways from Sunday’s (23 February) election in Germany: they are the numbers 83.5 and 80.
The former is the voter turnout — 83.5 percent — the highest since 1987. In other words, the highest in the history of a united Germany.
The latter — 80 percent — is the total number of Germans who refused to even countenance voting for racist far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), whether they voted CDU/CSU, Green, Left, FPD, or the plethora of niche no-hoper parties that litter a fully-proportional electoral system.
That’s four-in-five Germans, on the highest turnout in 38 years, at what should have been a perfect storm for the AfD.
The self-proclaimed underdog party had the backing of the richest man in the history of the world, who declared that “Only [the] AfD can save Germany, end of story”. Tesla boss Elon Musk, when not making Nazi salutes, promoted their lies on the biggest political social media on earth.
That’s some underdog.
The AfD doubled their vote from 10.4 percent in 2021, but the party that started just over a decade ago as an oddball academics’ party objecting to the EU single currency, and morphed into an extremely racist party on the back of Angela Merkel’s decision to let in the over one million refugees from the Syrian civil war in 2015 could not have hoped for a better tailwind than 23 February 2025.
On the Friday night eve of voting weekend, a Syrian refugee was arrested for stabbing a man near to death in Berlin’s Holocaust memorial.
11 days ago, an Afghan refugee drove his car into an innocent crowd in Munich. A 37-year-old mother and her two-year-old daughter were killed, and 37 others were injured.
On 20 December, another refugee ploughed into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, killing six and injuring 299. He was actually an Islamophobic fanatic, just like the AfD. But to the AfD, he was merely a successful Saudi asylum seeker, so just another brown-skinned not ‘bio-Deutsch’ (ethnically white) German.
In June last year, a police officer was stabbed to death while protecting an anti-Islam rally, by an Afghan national.
There could not be a more receptive time to be appealing for votes on a white nationalist, anti-Islam, anti-foreigner platform.
And, yes, the AfD has made it to 20.8 percent, doubling their 10.4 percent in 2021.
But in any society, at any point in time, there is a small but significant hardcore of racist citizens. That’s a democracy, and they have a party to vote for.
What even 20 percent does emphatically NOT constitute is some amorphous voice of the real “people” — and it is about time mainstream politicians of the left, centre, and (especially) the centre-right stop pretending this group are somehow the authentic voice of the alienated masses.
But as we saw with the rise of Hitler, when you combine a racist scapegoating of an ethnic/religious minority PLUS a massive collapse of the economic condition of the majority, then you have a recipe for fascism — and it is Friedrich Merz’s job to prevent that now.
It’s (probably) nigh-on impossible to completely eradicate racism. But it’s more than possible to increase the material living conditions of the combined working classes and lower middle classes, ie the vast majority of society.
Whether the ‘BlackRock’ chancellor, who has never held a ministerial post, was distrusted by his centrist predecessor as CDU leader, Angela Merkel, and apparently owns not one but two private jets, is the man to do this, remains to be seen.
But he has already shown — perhaps through fatigue, perhaps through adrenaline — an unexpected honesty on Sunday night’s election coverage, admitting that the US, a country he has worshipped all his life, is no longer a friend or ally of Europe under Donald Trump, and talking of Europe being “independent” from Washington.
Germany’s economy — predicated for over a century on a combination of heavy industry and precision engineering, and a million years from being a tech or digital leader — is in the doldrums, with growth stalled and bills rising. But the quality of life, even for the poorest ‘left-behind’ regions in the former communist East, is of a standard their parents, let alone their grandparents, could only have dreamed of.
The mainstream parties need to be unafraid of pointing out this elephant in the room. If you’re not happy being (relatively) poor in Germany, fair enough, but you’re not going to be better off anywhere else, so don’t blame it on migrants.
In other ‘good’ results, the Bundestag has seen the back of the ego-driven trouble-making of would-be kingmaker Christian Lindner, and his tiny neo-liberal Free Democratic Party (FPD).
Lindner was responsible for collapsing a possible coalition with Merkel in 2017, after two full months of negotiations, before it even got started (a coalition his FPD would, in fact, have been perfect for driving through a much-needed 'digitalisation' agenda), and then again collapsing the 2021-2025 ‘traffic-light’ coalition. A two-time wrecker, with an appetite for power without responsibility, not even five percent of Germans wanted him.
Similarly, but more interestingly, the Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) failed to make the five-percent threshold. An ‘economically-left, culture wars-right’ party could still have a future in Germany, or elsewhere, but not when run as a one-woman personality cult. The BSW posters littering the capital merely had a picture of Wagenknecht’s face, with the slogan “Sahra's Coming”. That didn’t work.
The Greens, for all the talk of a historically-unpopular coalition, did better than expected, only dropping 3.1 percent on their historic high of 2021. You won't be reading it in other coverage, but Sunday's 11 percent was in fact their second-best result ever. Not bad for coming out of a bruising coalition as the junior partner.
The SPD? Well, they clearly needed the more charismatic Boris Pistorius, rather than the cold and aloof Olaf Scholz, but Pistorius’ time may come soon under a ‘Grand Coalition’ of the SPD with Merz’s CDU.
Scholz will never be fondly remembered, but in time, his Red/Yellow/Green traffic light coalition might be seen as better than voters gave it credit for. Taking office amid the ongoing Covid pandemic in 2021, the government was soon shaken by Russia’s war of aggression in Europe just five months into its term. Despite internal challenges, particularly from FPD Lindner, the coalition managed to push through serious legislation, including ambitious environmental policies, dual citizenship for the country’s largest minority (Turkish ‘gastarbeiters’), and, somewhat under the radar, the legalisation of cannabis.
Matthew is EUobserver's Opinion Editor. He joined EUobserver in June 2018. Previously he worked as a reporter for The Guardian in London, and as editor for AFP in Paris and DPA in Berlin.
Matthew is EUobserver's Opinion Editor. He joined EUobserver in June 2018. Previously he worked as a reporter for The Guardian in London, and as editor for AFP in Paris and DPA in Berlin.