Historical Elections of Germany – in graphs

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German voters turned out that they voted in bulk on Sunday and gave Friedrich Merz, leader of the conservative CDU/CSU block, the mandate to the successor of Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

However, this mandate is far from enthusiastic: the extreme right -wing alternative for Germany (AfD) also doubled its contingent of the legislators since the previous elections in 2021 and the extreme left experienced the late increase in appeal to younger voters.

This will complicate Merz's task, especially if he is trying to release the constitutional debt brake to finance defense spending, a plan that stated these two rebel parties to be against.

Here are the main with you German legislative elections:

Germany “Folk Parties” continues to decline

The elections emphasized the constant erosion to support the so-called folk parties-CD and the SPD-, which dominated German political life since 1949.

Merz In order to ensure at least 30 percent of the CDU votes and its Bavarian sister side of the CSU to create a stable coalition. Instead, the German conservatives won elections with 28.5 % of the share, the second lowest summary in their history and only four points more than their worst result in 2021. The result is also less than 32.9 % of the Merz's party voting party in 2017 Angela Merkel's opponent was provided.

With 16.4 % of the voice, the SPD suffered its worst defeat since 1887. The main reason was deep dissatisfaction with Scholz's bicking coalition with greenery and liberal free democrats (FDP). Scholz's government chaired the stagnant economy as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on full and in November ended acrimones over the budget dispute.

FDP Christian Lindner did not ensure enough votes to enter parliament, while the green – led by the Minister of Economy Robert Habeck – also lost support, albeit to a lesser extent than his other coalition partners.

Return of the “Great Coalition”

The fact that FDP and BSW, the “left -wing” Sahra Wagenknecht 'side, missed the Prague 5 % of the vote to enter the Bundestag (the second by 0.03 percentage point) means larger parties are left with multiple seats, giving Merz a bilateral coalition option with SPD.

This would mean the return of the so-called “Grand Coalition”, except that with the combined 328 seats, their 13-place would not be large.

Voters mobilized for the far right AfD

The highest participation from unification – 82.5 % – largely benefited AfD.

The increase in extreme law came to the detriment of all other parties, but its greatest success was in mobilization of non-voters: about 40 percent of the 4.4 million voters acquired by AfD were citizens who did not vote in 2021, according to the elections, according to Inframest Dimap for the Ard transmitter.

AfD received 910,000 CDU/CSU voters, but lost them about 1 MN. This suggests that Merz's gambit campaign for stricter immigration laws – and violates the German taboo by relying on the AfD votes to approve the migration proposal in parliament – was slightly positive on a clean basis.

AfD wins large in the east and proceeds in the poorest parts of the west

AfD, which cooperates by Chancellor Alice Weidel, has become the greatest political force in the East German states, where it gained the most direct mandates.

Although failed to win its first direct constituency in the West, the AfD voted by the list of parties – the second vote, which determines the share of seats in parliament for each side – in the western city of Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr, SPD, the fortress that suffered deindustrialization.

The far -right party was also the first in Kaiserslautern in the southwest.

Younger voters showed up on the left

The long-term left Linke has achieved surprising profits-8.8 % of the voting-mobilization of the youngest voters. It became the largest party between 18-24 years.

However, AfD came second, which means that almost half of the youngest German cohort supported the party in both extremes of the political spectrum, sharply since 2021.

“Many recent articles said that young voters go to radical law.” But the biggest party [among the youth] He's Die Linke, ”said Anna-Sophie Heinz, political science at the University of Trier.

Heinze said Die Linke was dealing with “very successful mobilization of young people”, including Via Tiktok – once considered the AfD domain. She added that she helped her with a “star” the quality of his candidate for Chancellor Heidi Reichinnek, whose distinctive style includes a blunt edge, red lipstick and a heavily tattooed left arm.

AfD was the number one option for 25-44 years, but one in four claimed that they voted for the extreme right-wing side.