Who will form the new government?
A key question for Germany, its neighbours and trade partners, is what coalition deal can be done after the election. Germany’s electoral system is meticulously proportional, so it’s very unlikely that any party will be able to govern alone.
Friedrich Merz is leader of the CDU/CSU conservative alliance, who are polling at nearly 30%, so the chancellorship is very much his to lose.
The CDU has said it will maintain the Brandmauer – or firewall – policy of not going into alliance with the far right, which includes the AfD. But the firewall has been seriously compromised during the election campaign, when Merz tried to pass a Bundestag motion with AfD support – the attempt only failed because rebels in the CDU refused to cooperate.
The CDU may be able to form a coalition with the Greens, or may have to rely on a “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats. But in all likelihood, a sizeable vote will have been recorded for the AfD and their stances on Europe and Ukraine. This may make the coalition less stable, particularly if Merz’s CDU continues its attempt to woo AfD voters. And excluding AfD from coalition talks will reinforce the populist narrative of a lockout by the liberal elite.
Sources: Population, land area, GDP from Our World in Data, latest available figures. Car parts exports 2023 from UN Comtrade database. Ukraine assistance from the Kiel Institute. Polling from wahlrecht.de. Party positioning from PopuList. EU contribution figures from the 2023 budget. Length of government calculated using the parlgov database.
• This article was amended on 19 February 2025. A graph of political parties in an earlier version incorrectly labelled the Left party as PDS, one of its predecessor parties.
