German elections: what can the left learn?

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FEBRUARY 26, 2025

Mike Phipps analyses the results of Germany’s parliamentary elections.

The parliamentary elections to Germany’s Bundestag produced some highly significant changes – the collapse of the ruling SPD into third place, their displacement by the conservative CDU/CSU, albeit with less than 30% of the vote, the surge of support for the far right AfD into second place with 21% of the vote and a significant vote for the Left Party (Die Linke) on 9%.

Turnout was the highest since German reunification, with nearly two-thirds of voters saying they feared for the future of their democracy. And despite the media narrative, only 15% of voters identified immigration as their priority, while 18% said it was the future of the welfare state.

A significant gender gap was also evident. Women were far more likely to vote for parties of the left than men, whereas men were far more likely to vote for parties on the right, particularly the far right AfD.

The collapse of the coalition

The SPD, which had led the ‘traffic light’ coalition of the last three years, was particularly punished, getting its worst result ever. As an article on Labour Hub said fifteen months ago, “Contrary to its election promises, the SPD has hardly addressed social issues. There is no Baföger increase (state subsidies for students).  Because of increased building costs and loans, there are no promised 400,000 new flats per year. Also in the health sector, led by the SPD health minister Karl Lauterbach, there is talk of clinic closures; medicines are not available and people often have to wait months for doctor’s appointments.”

The neoliberal, business-friendly FDP  controlled the finance ministry and set much of the economic agenda, for example rejecting an electricity price brake for companies, which is favoured by all the states in Germany. The FDP also paid a high price in this election, dropping below the 5% threshold of the vote needed to secure seats in the parliament.

The German economy is in a dire state. “The great manufacturing powerhouse of Europe, Germany, has ground to a halt since the pandemic,” says Michael Roberts. “German real GDP has stagnated for the last five years. Real business investment in Germany is severely depressed, more so than in the Eurozone overall. Real household consumption in Germany has been hammered… Real wages in Germany remain below pre-pandemic levels.” Additionally, energy costs have rocketed, partly because imports from Russia have dried up as part of the sanctions imposed following its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

The government’s response to the increasing numbers of immigrants was simply to crack down on people smuggling and reduce welfare for new arrivals. This has had little effect, primarily because there is little evidence that ‘welfare magnetism’ is a driver of immigration. In any case, Germany needs 288,000 migrants every year to maintain its workforce.

The political elite ignores this. The first televised debate of the election campaign between Scholz and Merz became a competition over who was tougher on migrants. The narrative that immigrants were a burden was exploited by the AfD, who made it their central election campaign issue.

As Owen Jones says, “We can see this phenomenon across the West – mainstream parties adopting the rhetoric and policies of the far right. They think this will keep the far right at bay, but in practise it legitimises the far right, and shifts the political conversation on to the territory that suits them.”

The rise of the far right

The AfD came second overall, doubling their vote share. But they came first across the eastern states, getting a shocking 39% in the state of Thuringia. They did remarkably well with younger voters, coming second among the under-25s, first among 25 to 34-year-olds, and joint first with the CDU-CSU in the 35-44 age bracket.

Their rise was clearly aided by the way in which the political elite legitimised their arguments on immigration. A series of violent attacks by migrants, including one by an Afghan refugee in Munich on a Christmas mas market, have also been exploited by the AfD, who called for forced deportations in their election propaganda.

Other factors helped the AfD, not least the open support they received from sections of the Trump administration. Additionally, the absolute support that the entire political class in Germany has given to Israel and the state crackdown on voices supporting Palestine helped the AfD push a narrative that demonized migrants from Muslim countries as well as left wing activists.

The Left Party did well

The Left Party result was also spectacular in the circumstances. Sahra Wagenknecht, once one of its best-known politicians, left in October 2023, to form her own organisation, denouncing “lifestyle leftists” for not listening to voters enough on the need to curb immigration. She also called for closer ties with Russia, voted against proposals to make it easier to change one’s gender and opposed Covid vaccine mandates. In the event, her BSW got under 5%, while the Left Party surged to 9%.

The Left Party stood firm on the issue of immigration and won a number of urban liberal voters who might once have voted Green.  A Bundestag speech in which Heidi Reichinnek, the Left’s joint parliamentary leader, denounced CDU leader Friedrich Merz for relying on AfD support for a parliamentary motion to tighten asylum rules, has been watched at least 30 million times.

Merz’s pitching for AfD support on refugee policy broke a major taboo in German politics and provoked a significant backlash. Hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated across Germany against the move. The revulsion against Merz’s attempt to bring proposals to the Bundestag with far right support helps explain the high turnout and the surge in support for the Left party, the only party to defend migrants in this election.

With 64 seats in the Bundestag, the Left Party can now make or break any attempts to revise the German constitution, which require a two-thirds majority. It did especially well among younger voters in the big cities, coming first in Berlin, in the under-25 age bracket and with first-time voters.

Besides taking on right wing extremism, the Left Party came out clearly against ‘those at the top’ – landlords, corporate bosses, millionaires or the government. “We are taking on the rich. Nobody else is doing that,” they said.

They also offered concrete help, creating a ‘rent gouging app’ that tenants can use to check whether they are paying too much for their apartment. In recent months, the party is thought to have gained 20,000 new members.

Ines Schwerdtner, the Left’s co-chair, is keen to build support for the party among the industrial working class. That’s a challenging task: at this election, the AfD won an estimated 38% of working class votes.

Lessons for Labour

“This is a story we’ve seen across Western Europe – social democrats have abandoned social democracy, have proved unable to protect the living standards and security of working class people, and the far right has offered their own answers to that,” opines Owen Jones.

“There are obvious parallels between what’s happened in Germany and what’s unfolding here,” writes Phil Burton-Cartledge. “A centrist coalition of sensible grown-ups have presided over years of economic stagnation and lacklustre investment. Coincidentally, farmers’ protests over the cancellation of a tax break was one of the nails driven into the SPD-FDP-Green coalition’s coffin. The final straw was the provocative proposal of the FDP to take the axe to social security and public spending… Having learned nothing and uninterested in the lessons of history, the SPD and Greens both pursued policies at odds with their popular constituencies and have paid the political price.”

New evidence emerged this week that Labour is losing support fastest among voters who feel economically insecure. The analysis by the University of Oxford academics Prof Jane Green and Prof Geoffrey Evans, commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation poverty charity, is a warning to the Government that it will pay a high price for failing to solve the cost of living crisis.

Prof Green, who is the director of the Nuffield Politics Research Centre, said: “Financially insecure voters are the ones looking for political alternatives because they can’t see things getting better for themselves or their children. All the talk of culture wars and immigration misses their primary experience.”

The lesson is clear: if Labour fails to deliver on these key issues as miserably as the outgoing SPD-led coalition in Germany, it will be swept out of power – by forces to its political right.

Mike Phipps’ book Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow: The Labour Party after Jeremy Corbyn (OR Books, 2022) can be ordered here.

Image: Friedrich Merz. Creator: Steffen Prößdorf | Credit: Steffen Prößdorf Copyright: Steffen Prößdorf. Licence: Namensnennung-Share Alike 4.0 International CC BY-SA 4.0 Deed