With Merkel Out, Germany’s CDU Suffer Their Worst Result in Federal Election since World War II
26/09/2021 - By Ivan Dikov
With outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel completing her fourth and last term at the helm of Germany, her center-right bloc CDU/CSU suffered its worst result even in a federal election against the backdrop of gains for the center-left and the Greens.
Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) led in Sunday’s election by its chancellor candidate Armin Laschet, together with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) received only 24.2% of the votes.
This is the CDU/CSU alliance’s worst electoral score since Germany’s first elections after World War II were held in 1949.
It is a drop of 8.9 percentage points compared with the previous federal election in 2017, and it also the first time the CDU/CSU has received fewer than 30% of the votes.
The decision of Angela Merkel, who has served four consecutive four-year terms as German chancellor, to step down also made the 2021 federal election notable by turning it into the first federal vote in the country’s postwar history in which the incumbent chancellor hasn’t sought reelection.
While the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) has come on top, its result of 25.7%, an increase of 5.2 percentage points from the past election in 2017, isn’t much greater than the CDU’s, and leaving wide open the question as to who led the coalition to form Germany’s next government.
The environmentalist Greens party came in third in Germany’s federal election on Sunday, with its best electoral score ever at 14.6%, up 5.7 percentage points from 2017.
The liberal centrist Free Democratic Party remained fourth with 11.5% of the votes, up 0.7 percentage points from four years ago.
The fifth spot is for the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) which received 10.4%, down 2.3 points from 2017.
The far-leftist “Left” party is sixth with only 4.8% of the votes, down 4.3% from the previous federal elections.
Sunday’s federal vote in Germany saw a rather high turnout of 76.6%.
The results have opened the way for various coalition possibilities although both of the two biggest formations, the CDU/CSU and the SPD, which have been ruling Germany in a “grand right-left coalition” since 2017, might opt to try to form a three-way coalition, most likely including the Greens.
If that proves to be the case, it will be the first time since Germany will have three parties in power at the federal level since the 1960s.
Both the Social Democrats and the Greens have gained more than five percentage points compared with the previous federal election in 2017, which is giving them a morale boost against the backdrop of the CDU/CSU alliance’s grim result.
SPD’s win, however, is hardly too categorical, while the Greens had higher hopes based on projections earlier in the electoral campaign.
(Chart: The projection of the 2021 German federal election results from Infratest dimap/ARD)
Germany election: worst ever result momentarily silences CDU
Philip Oltermann in Berlin
As the first exit poll flashed up on the screens inside the Konrad Adenauer Haus, the Berlin headquarters of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the party faithful who had gathered in the central courtyard fell silent.
The black bar representing their conservative party showed up first: 25%, the worst result the dominant political force of modern German politics – the party of Angela Merkel, Helmut Kohl and Adenauer – has achieved in its history. Until today, the CDU’s low point was the 31% it had gained at the first democratic vote in the postwar era, in 1949.
“Vote what makes Germany strong”, urged a large banner outside the building, showing the head of CDU chancellor candidate Armin Laschet in a line next to its era-defining chancellors. But tonight the CDU looked weak, and Laschet will face an uphill struggle to inherit the chancellory on the back of such a painful result.
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The CDU not only has history, however, it also has an uncanny inability to give up a fight. When the television screen showed the bar for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), revealing the two traditional broad-church parties to be neck-and-neck, there were yelps of relief.
By the time it was clear that a leftwing coalition between the SPD, the Greens and Die Linke would on first exit polls not have enough support for a governing majority, young Christian Democrats were cheering and clapping with their hands in the air.
When Laschet took to the stage at his party HQ at shortly before 7pm CET, his speech was almost upbeat: “We knew this would be an open and tight election”, he said. “We can’t be happy with the result, but this will be a long evening”.
Like Olaf Scholz, the SPD candidate, he laid down a claim to lead the next government. Every vote for his party was a vote against a leftwing government, he said “which is why we will do everything to form a government under the leadership of the [Christian Democratic] Union”.
During the Merkel era, Germany’s conservatives had long looked immune to the erosion in support suffered by other traditional parties of the centre-right across Europe. In 2013, the chancellor shored up 41.5% of the national vote behind her party, an emphatic win reminiscent of the time in the middle of the 20th century, when Germany was a de-facto two party state.
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Now that the CDU has caught up with the rest of Europe, it is unclear what the ramifications will be. Rightwingers in the party will blame Merkel for having gutted her conservative outfit of its old ideological core, leaving her successor to pick up the mess. Centrist will say the ideological core has had little to offer to a modern German electorate, and that it is only thanks to Merkel’s skill that the party managed to remain popular for so long.
Many will point a finger at Laschet, whose ran a campaign that lacked focus, energy and a coherent message. The lackadaisical air that has followed him throughout the campaign trail was evident even on the day of the vote: as Laschet posed in front of photographers at the polling station, it was obvious he had accidentally folded his ballot the wrong way around, so that his own vote was clear for everyone to see.
After the result, many commentators will say that the CDU would have won a clear victory if it had picked as its candidate Markus Söder, the highly energetic and waspish state premier of Bavaria.
Sunday’s result in Germany’s south throws a question mark over such received wisdom: the Christian Social Union (CSU), the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, on Sunday night looked on course to get 33% of the vote in the conservative stronghold, the second-worst result in its history.
As the Christian Democratic Union’s digested the result on Sunday night, eyes also turned to the result in the electoral district number 196.
The constituency, in an unspectacular part of the eastern state of Thuringia, was seen by some as one battleground that could point to the party’s future: the CDU was represented here by Hans-Georg Maaßen, the former head of Germany’s domestic intelligence agency who was forced to resign in 2018 after being accused of ignoring evidence of anti-immigrant riots in the east.
Maaßen sees his job to win back CDU voters who have drifted off to Alternative for Germany (AfD), mainly by co-opting their agenda. On social media channels, he has railed against Merkel’s immigration policy, “economic globalists”, and a perceived takeover of national media by leftwing activists.
The AfD sees it differently: it has hopes that Maaßen could be the door-opener to future coalitions between the large conservative bloc and the far-right upstarts. One local AfD branch, in the city of Suhl, endorsed Maaßen over its own candidate, urging its supporters to vote for “a candidate with backbone and political experience”.
On Sunday night it looked like the Maaßen experiment had failed spectacularly: not only was the SPD on course to win the seat in district number 196, the CDU rightwinger was also trailing behind the AfD in third place.
The worst-case scenario for the Christian Democrats was always that its party would descend into infighting as soon as the clock struck 6 o’clock on Sunday, and be unfit to conduct coherent coalition talks in the coming weeks.
With the eventual result as close as it is, and no emboldened rival in sight, Laschet is likely to survive. His party will do its utmost to block out the historic nature of its defeat, and fight to keep alive its dream of leading the next chancellor regardless.
The center-left Social Democrats are ahead of the conservative CDU/CSU bloc by almost 2%, according to initial projected results. In such a tight race, the possibilities for a coalition are still unclear
The first projected results are in for Germany's 2021 federal election, with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) on 25.8%, narrowly ahead of the center-right Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party (CDU/CSU) on 24.1%.
Both the conservative bloc and the SPD have said they want to lead the next government, and mathematically, either party could if they secure the necessary allies.
The environmentalist Greens are on course to record their best ever result, headed for around 14% of the vote. The pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) had 11.5%, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) had 10.5%. The socialist Left party was hovering around the 5% mark.
The projections suggest the center-left parties were the biggest winners of the election. Both the SPD and the Greens are on course to gain more than 5% compared to their result in the last federal election in 2017.
The conservative bloc suffered heavy losses as the Angela Merkel era comes to an end. They were down by over 8% on the previous election and are heading towards their worst result since World War II.
What this means
In such a tight race, coalition possibilities remain unclear.
According to these projections, one option is a continuation of the "grand coalition" of the conservative CDU/CSU bloc and the SPD that has governed Germany since 2013.
However, with the two biggest parties both vowing to build the next government, Germany could be headed for a three-way coalition for the first time since the 1960s at the federal level.
Options include a coalition between the CDU/CSU, the Greens and the FDP.
Alternatively, the SPD could also seek to partner up with the Greens and the FDP.
All parties have ruled out entering into a coalition with the AfD.
The election of Germany's new chancellor by the Bundestag won't take place until a governing coalition has been formed. This could take months. But SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz said he hoped coalition talks would be wrapped up by Christmas.
"To name an exact date would be absurd, but it must be the case that I, that we, do everything to ensure that we are ready before Christmas — a little earlier would also be good," Scholz said during a round-table discussion with other party candidates on Sunday night.
CDU chancellor candidate Armin Laschet also called for a government to "definitely" be formed before Christmas. In the meantime, Angela Merkel will remain in office in a caretaker role.
What the parties are saying
Scholz celebrated the projected election results at the SPD's party headquarters in Berlin, telling a crowd of cheering supporters that voters had made it clear they want him to be the "next chancellor."
"We have what it takes to govern a country," he said. "Let's wait for the final results, but then we will get down to work."
Laschet said the conservative bloc would do "everything we can" to form a new government, despite the election setback.
"We cannot be satisfied with the results of the election," Laschet told his supporters.
"We will do everything we can to build a conservative-led government because Germans now need a future coalition that modernizes our country," he said. "It will probably be the first time that we will have a government with three partners."
Greens chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock admitted that her party hadn't performed as well as expected, despite winning more votes than in the last federal election.
"We wanted more. We didn't achieve that, partly because of our own mistakes at the beginning of the campaign —mistakes on my part," Baerbock told supporters.
The Greens enjoyed a surge in support earlier in the year, even taking the lead in polls, but their popularity took a hit after a series of missteps, including a plagiarism scandal. Although the Greens don't have a shot at the chancellorship, they could play a role in the next governing coalition.
How does the election work?
The German electoral system produces coalition governments. It seeks to unite the principles of majority rule and proportional representation. Each voter casts two ballots. The first is for what is called a "direct" candidate from their constituency and the second is for a political party.
Any party that gets more than 5% of the votes is guaranteed a place in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag. This ensures that both big and small parties are represented, but has led to the legislature becoming the second-biggest in the world with a possible 900 seats this time around.
The reason is Germany's complicated electoral law, and the mandates for the "overhang" seats (Überhangmandate) and compensation "leveling" seats (Ausgleichsmandate) that assure the composition of the Bundestag will be proportionate to the actual votes for the parties.
How long will it take to form a coalition?
The process of forming could take weeks, or even months.
Coalition negotiations in 2017 were the longest in German history, leaving the country without a government for almost six months. This is because the FDP walked out of talks between the CDU and the Green party after a month of negotiations. For the last eight years, the two biggest parties, the CDU and the SPD, have governed together with Angela Merkel as chancellor.
It remains to be seen if the process will go quicker this time — especially if the political priorities of the partners are more closely aligned.
How is the chancellor chosen?
The parties put forward their candidate ahead of the election campaign. Once a new government is in place, the German president nominates a chancellor to be elected by the Bundestag. This is typically the main candidate from the senior coalition partner in the newly-formed government.
To be elected, the chancellor candidate needs an absolute majority from lawmakers. So far, all chancellors, including Merkel, have been elected in the first round.
Can an election be contested?
In Germany, any eligible voter can contest elections. They must send a written formal objection to the election review commission with the Bundestag in Berlin within two months of election day.
This commission processes all submissions. A decision is made on each individual challenge, and each objector receives feedback from the Bundestag. The entire procedure can take up to one year.
To invalidate the results of a Bundestag election, an objection must meet two requirements. Firstly, there must be an electoral error that violates the Federal Election Act, the Federal Election Code, or the Constitution. Secondly, the reported electoral error would have to have an impact on the distribution of seats in the Bundestag.
Objectors can also contest the findings of the election review commission and go all the way to the Federal Constitutional Court.
A German national vote has never been declared invalid.
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