19/02/2025, Wednesday
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File photo
AfD has almost doubled its support since 2021 because of voter dissatisfaction with Scholz's coalition government, says Manfred Guellner, head of the Forsa polling institute
- Unpopularity of chancellor frontrunner Merz, particularly among women and young people, has made it difficult for the CDU/CSU to woo disillusioned voters, according to expert
- If all small parties enter parliament, Merz's CDU/CSU will need a more complex three-party coalition, potentially creating political instability that the AfD could exploit, says Guellner
Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is gaining support as center-right parties have failed to capture protest votes, a senior polling expert has told Anadolu ahead of Sunday's elections.
Manfred Guellner, head of the Forsa polling institute, said many Germans were dissatisfied with Chancellor Olaf Scholz's collapsed three-party coalition, but the main opposition Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) failed to win over these voters.
“Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Friedrich Merz was unpopular even in the early days of his political activity, and this has not changed even to this day,” he said. “Merz is unpopular especially among female voters, young people, and also voters in East Germany.”
With just days to go, Merz's Christian Democrats hold a clear lead of 27% in latest polls, but this represents a sharp decline from the conservative alliance's previous electoral showings – 41.5% in 2013, 41.4% in 1994, and 48.8% in 1983.
The far-right AfD, meanwhile, has almost doubled its tally since the previous election, from 10.3% in 2021 to approximately 20% in current polls.
According to Guellner, the AfD has attracted protest votes from those uncomfortable with the policies of Scholz's coalition government – commonly known as the “traffic light coalition” due to the party colors of its members: the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens, and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP).
The AfD has now become the first far-right party in Germany's post-WWII history to gain such broad public support, as past surveys show that right-wing extremist views were never supported by more than 10% of German voters.
“The AfD's vote share now surpasses that of any previous right-wing radical movement – groups that have existed continuously in the Federal Republic since the collapse of National Socialism,” Guellner said, referring to the collapse of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in 1945.
“The AfD has not only won over these right-wing radical voters, but has also benefited from dissatisfaction with Chancellor Scholz's traffic light coalition. Those unhappy with this coalition have turned to the AfD rather than the main opposition Christian Democrats,” he explained.
Scholz's coalition fell apart in November after escalating disagreements over government spending and borrowing plans.
Its three-year term generated widespread public discontent, struggling to address rising energy prices, increased living costs, migration challenges, and broader socioeconomic issues.
- AfD protest voters ‘beginning to embrace extremist views'
Guellner said the number of undecided voters remains unusually high this time compared to previous pre-election surveys.
He attributed this partly to the unpopularity of both chancellor candidates – frontrunner Merz and the incumbent Scholz.
While the AfD has largely benefited from public discontent, the expert highlighted a concerning trend: many who initially supported the AfD as protest voters are now beginning to embrace the party's extremist views.
“The main core of AfD voters are those who have always been susceptible to a right-wing extremist world view, for xenophobia and ethnic-nationalist ideas, and the others have started to support the AfD out of protest,” he explained.
“But they also adopt the AfD way of thinking, and that is the danger. They are now not letting themselves change their mind in their decision to vote for the AfD,” he added.
In recent years, several prominent members of the AfD have sparked controversy with their anti-immigrant, xenophobic, and antisemitic remarks.
AfD leaders have repeatedly promoted their controversial “remigration” proposal – a vague term the party uses to describe mass deportations of immigrants from the country.
Critics accuse the party of stirring up fear of terrorism for political gain, spreading negative propaganda about immigrants, and encouraging anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia in the country.
- Fragmented results in AfD's favor
After the elections, analysts expect Merz's CDU/CSU alliance to seek a two-party coalition with either Scholz's SPD or the Greens. However, if three small parties surpass the 5% parliamentary threshold, the CDU/CSU will need to form a three-member coalition instead, as mainstream parties would hold fewer seats.
According to the latest YouGov poll, the socialist Die Linke is set to enter parliament with 9%, while the left-populist BSW polled at 5%, barely clearing the threshold. The liberal FDP stands at 4%, falling short of parliamentary entry.
With support for the AfD rising and voters increasingly disillusioned with the center-right and center-left parties that have long governed Germany through coalitions, Guellner warned that a fragmented election result could delay the formation of a stable government.
This, he said, could lead to weeks of negotiations and political uncertainty, potentially increasing the far-right AfD's support even further.
Despite the AfD's significant rise in polls, the party remains politically isolated in the German political landscape. All mainstream parties have consistently refused to form coalitions or cooperate with the far-right party, citing its extremist positions and anti-democratic tendencies.
“If all the small parties get over 5% and enter the parliament – the FDP, the BSW (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance), and Die Linke (The Left) – then there could be a situation of instability,” he warned.
“The formation of a two-party coalition government between the CDU/CSU and SPD might also be at risk, and that is a situation that the AfD could also exploit again if there is no stable new government.”
File photo
AfD has almost doubled its support since 2021 because of voter dissatisfaction with Scholz's coalition government, says Manfred Guellner, head of the Forsa polling institute
- Unpopularity of chancellor frontrunner Merz, particularly among women and young people, has made it difficult for the CDU/CSU to woo disillusioned voters, according to expert
- If all small parties enter parliament, Merz's CDU/CSU will need a more complex three-party coalition, potentially creating political instability that the AfD could exploit, says Guellner
Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is gaining support as center-right parties have failed to capture protest votes, a senior polling expert has told Anadolu ahead of Sunday's elections.
Manfred Guellner, head of the Forsa polling institute, said many Germans were dissatisfied with Chancellor Olaf Scholz's collapsed three-party coalition, but the main opposition Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) failed to win over these voters.
“Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Friedrich Merz was unpopular even in the early days of his political activity, and this has not changed even to this day,” he said. “Merz is unpopular especially among female voters, young people, and also voters in East Germany.”
With just days to go, Merz's Christian Democrats hold a clear lead of 27% in latest polls, but this represents a sharp decline from the conservative alliance's previous electoral showings – 41.5% in 2013, 41.4% in 1994, and 48.8% in 1983.
The far-right AfD, meanwhile, has almost doubled its tally since the previous election, from 10.3% in 2021 to approximately 20% in current polls.
According to Guellner, the AfD has attracted protest votes from those uncomfortable with the policies of Scholz's coalition government – commonly known as the “traffic light coalition” due to the party colors of its members: the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens, and the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP).
The AfD has now become the first far-right party in Germany's post-WWII history to gain such broad public support, as past surveys show that right-wing extremist views were never supported by more than 10% of German voters.
“The AfD's vote share now surpasses that of any previous right-wing radical movement – groups that have existed continuously in the Federal Republic since the collapse of National Socialism,” Guellner said, referring to the collapse of Adolf Hitler's Nazi regime in 1945.
“The AfD has not only won over these right-wing radical voters, but has also benefited from dissatisfaction with Chancellor Scholz's traffic light coalition. Those unhappy with this coalition have turned to the AfD rather than the main opposition Christian Democrats,” he explained.
Scholz's coalition fell apart in November after escalating disagreements over government spending and borrowing plans.
Its three-year term generated widespread public discontent, struggling to address rising energy prices, increased living costs, migration challenges, and broader socioeconomic issues.
- AfD protest voters ‘beginning to embrace extremist views'
Guellner said the number of undecided voters remains unusually high this time compared to previous pre-election surveys.
He attributed this partly to the unpopularity of both chancellor candidates – frontrunner Merz and the incumbent Scholz.
While the AfD has largely benefited from public discontent, the expert highlighted a concerning trend: many who initially supported the AfD as protest voters are now beginning to embrace the party's extremist views.
“The main core of AfD voters are those who have always been susceptible to a right-wing extremist world view, for xenophobia and ethnic-nationalist ideas, and the others have started to support the AfD out of protest,” he explained.
“But they also adopt the AfD way of thinking, and that is the danger. They are now not letting themselves change their mind in their decision to vote for the AfD,” he added.
In recent years, several prominent members of the AfD have sparked controversy with their anti-immigrant, xenophobic, and antisemitic remarks.
AfD leaders have repeatedly promoted their controversial “remigration” proposal – a vague term the party uses to describe mass deportations of immigrants from the country.
Critics accuse the party of stirring up fear of terrorism for political gain, spreading negative propaganda about immigrants, and encouraging anti-Muslim racism and Islamophobia in the country.
- Fragmented results in AfD's favor
After the elections, analysts expect Merz's CDU/CSU alliance to seek a two-party coalition with either Scholz's SPD or the Greens. However, if three small parties surpass the 5% parliamentary threshold, the CDU/CSU will need to form a three-member coalition instead, as mainstream parties would hold fewer seats.
According to the latest YouGov poll, the socialist Die Linke is set to enter parliament with 9%, while the left-populist BSW polled at 5%, barely clearing the threshold. The liberal FDP stands at 4%, falling short of parliamentary entry.
With support for the AfD rising and voters increasingly disillusioned with the center-right and center-left parties that have long governed Germany through coalitions, Guellner warned that a fragmented election result could delay the formation of a stable government.
This, he said, could lead to weeks of negotiations and political uncertainty, potentially increasing the far-right AfD's support even further.
Despite the AfD's significant rise in polls, the party remains politically isolated in the German political landscape. All mainstream parties have consistently refused to form coalitions or cooperate with the far-right party, citing its extremist positions and anti-democratic tendencies.
“If all the small parties get over 5% and enter the parliament – the FDP, the BSW (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance), and Die Linke (The Left) – then there could be a situation of instability,” he warned.
“The formation of a two-party coalition government between the CDU/CSU and SPD might also be at risk, and that is a situation that the AfD could also exploit again if there is no stable new government.”
Germany Snap Polls 2025:
German ‘bureaucracy monster’ on everyone’s election hit list
By AFP
February 18, 2025
Slashing bureaucracy was a key demand at a recent Berlin protest called by business groups wanting to revive the stagnating economy - Copyright AFP/File JOSH EDELSON
Clement Kasser with Louis Van Boxel-Woolf in Frankfurt
German politicians make a lot of laws and regulations but on the campaign trail many rage against the country’s notorious bureaucracy, labelling it a monster that needs to be slayed.
Whatever else divides them, almost all candidates in the February 23 vote agree with the popular idea that Europe’s biggest economy needs to slash back its thicket of rules, often labelled a “jungle of paragraphs”.
Some want to take a chainsaw to it all, inspired by Argentina’s neoliberal President Javier Milei, even if their true intent at times may be to weaken troublesome labour or environmental standards.
Conservative poll frontrunner Friedrich Merz — who once famously argued a tax return should fit onto a beer coaster — has vowed to go to war against the “bureaucracy monster”.
Merz and others want to free companies from national and EU reporting obligations, especially the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, that they regard as headache-inducing as its German tongue twister name, the “Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz”.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, in a controversial recent online chat to support Germany’s far-right AfD, claimed that the approval documents for his Tesla plant near Berlin amounted to an entire truckload of paper, each page stamped by hand.
– ‘Suffocated’ –
At a recent Berlin protest called by business groups who demanded steps to revive the stagnating economy, property firm manager Urs Moeller, 44, fumed about being “suffocated” by red tape.
“The accident insurance people keep inventing new procedures where they do nothing but send us a bill,” he told AFP.
“Taxes and bureaucracy are making it harder and harder to be efficient and pay attractive wages.”
The problem is real, and there is a report to prove it. The number of regulations has grown by 18 percent in Germany since 2014, according to government figures.
Critics charge that the time workers spent doing paperwork is a serious problem for a struggling economy already battered by high energy costs and growing Chinese competition.
Time spent filling in forms cost the German economy 65 billion euros ($67 billion), says the Normenkontrollrat, an independent body advising the government on regulation.
The Ifo economic institute, factoring in a series of indirect costs, puts the figure even higher — at a whopping 146 billion euros or 3.4 percent of German economic output.
Digitisation is often touted as the answer — the foreign ministry this year was proud to announce it had finally moved visa applications online — but IT does not always prove to be the magic bullet.
Lutz Krause, who owns a construction company, said a new electronic invoicing system designed to help the government keep better track of receipts was causing paperwork to multiply.
And there are other issues — he said government clients were now the most difficult to deal with.
To get work on a construction site at Berlin Airport, he said, employees had to pass a security course that included written exams.
“More and more, we’re just avoiding government work,” he said.
– ‘Red tape radar’ –
German bureaucracy, according to Ifo rankings, is far heavier than in France or the Nordic countries, though not as onerous as in some other developed nations.
Like many other Europeans, Germans complain of a rising tide of EU rules emanating in Brussels.
The problem is made worse by German federalism, according to Ifo economist Oliver Falck, since the country’s 16 states often implement EU directives in different ways.
Germany’s tradition of decentralised administration only adds to the problem since “companies often have to give information to someone that they have already given to someone else“, he said.
The western state of Hesse has tried to fight this perception by appointing a minister for de-bureaucratisation, Manfred Pentz.
He is proud of the “red tape radar”, an online service through which 6,700 people have reported problems in dealing with authorities.
“Bureaucracy needs to be tackled so the economy can work again, so people aren’t turned off by the government,” he said.
But economist Falck is sceptical that much will change, having seen little progress in the past 20 years despite the subject never quite leaving the headlines.
Businessman Krause shares that fear: “Germans seem to have paperwork in their DNA.”
Olaf Scholz And 3 Others In Fray For Chancellor | About The Candidates
On the list for the next chancellors are the incumbent, the opposition leader, the current vice-chancellor, and — for the first time — a far-right party leader.
Outlook Web Desk
Updated on: 18 February 2025
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz | Photo: AP
With Germany's snap elections set for Sunday, a total of four candidates are in the running for the top post of Chancellor.
On the list for the next chancellors are the incumbent, the opposition leader, the current vice-chancellor, and — for the first time — a far-right party leader
Germany Snap Elections | Who Are The Top Candidates For Chancellor?
Olaf Scholz
Olaf Scholz, 66-year-old, has been Germany's chancellor since December 2021. The center-left Social Democrat has a wealth of government experience, having previously served as Hamburg's mayor and German labor and finance minister. Quickly finding himself dealing with unexpected crises, he launched an effort to modernize Germany's military after Russia invaded Ukraine and made Germany Ukraine's second-biggest weapons supplier.
He also tried to prevent an energy crunch and tried to counter high inflation. But his three-party coalition became infamous for infighting and collapsed in November as it argued over how to revitalize the economy.
Friedrich Merz
Germany's 69-year-old opposition leader Friedrich Merz has been the front-runner in the election campaign, with his centre-right Union bloc leading the poll
He became the leader of his Christian Democratic Union party after longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel — a former rival — stepped down in 2021.
He has taken his party in a more conservative direction. During the election campaign, he made curbing irregular migration a central issue.
Robert Habeck
The 55-year-old is the candidate from the environmentalist Greens party. He's also Germany's current vice chancellor and the economy and climate minister, with responsibility for energy issues.
From 2018 to 2022, he co-led the Greens and helped the party grow in popularity. However, in 2021, he decided to step down and allow Annalena Baerbock, who is the foreign minister, to lead the party's first-ever bid for the chancellorship.
Alice Weidel
With Weidel's contest for the top post, the 46-year-old is making the first bid from the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD). An economist by nature, Weidel joined the party shortly after it was founded in 2013. Since the party first secured seats in Germany's national legislature in 2017, she has served as co-leader of her party's parliamentary group. In 2022, she became a co-leader of the party alongside Tino Chrupalla. and in December, she was nominated as the AfD's candidate for chancellor.
However, other parties have made it clear they won't collaborate with the AfD, so at this point, her chances of becoming chancellor are highly unlikely.
Why Is Germany Holding Snap Elections?
In the country's last federal election in 2021, Scholz's center-left Social Democrats (SPD) formed a coalition with the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP).
The FDP was the most junior member of the coalition, representing just 11% of the electorate. However, ex-Finance Minister Christian Lindner, the leader of the FDP, openly disagreed with Scholz and other cabinet members on multiple occasions, most notably about the government's 2025 budget.
On November 6, the chancellor asked President Steinmeier to dismiss Lindner, which he did the next day. The FDP The FDP pulled its support from the coalition, leaving Scholz and the Greens as a minority government.
The SPD holds 207 seats in the 733-seat Bundestag, while the Greens have 117.Minority governments are frowned upon in Germany, and the collapse of a coalition is relatively rare compared to other European countries. It has only happened five times since Germany adopted its current constitution in 1949.
(With AP inputs)
On the list for the next chancellors are the incumbent, the opposition leader, the current vice-chancellor, and — for the first time — a far-right party leader.
Outlook Web Desk
Updated on: 18 February 2025
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz | Photo: AP
With Germany's snap elections set for Sunday, a total of four candidates are in the running for the top post of Chancellor.
On the list for the next chancellors are the incumbent, the opposition leader, the current vice-chancellor, and — for the first time — a far-right party leader
Germany Snap Elections | Who Are The Top Candidates For Chancellor?
Olaf Scholz
Olaf Scholz, 66-year-old, has been Germany's chancellor since December 2021. The center-left Social Democrat has a wealth of government experience, having previously served as Hamburg's mayor and German labor and finance minister. Quickly finding himself dealing with unexpected crises, he launched an effort to modernize Germany's military after Russia invaded Ukraine and made Germany Ukraine's second-biggest weapons supplier.
He also tried to prevent an energy crunch and tried to counter high inflation. But his three-party coalition became infamous for infighting and collapsed in November as it argued over how to revitalize the economy.
Friedrich Merz
Germany's 69-year-old opposition leader Friedrich Merz has been the front-runner in the election campaign, with his centre-right Union bloc leading the poll
He became the leader of his Christian Democratic Union party after longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel — a former rival — stepped down in 2021.
He has taken his party in a more conservative direction. During the election campaign, he made curbing irregular migration a central issue.
Robert Habeck
The 55-year-old is the candidate from the environmentalist Greens party. He's also Germany's current vice chancellor and the economy and climate minister, with responsibility for energy issues.
From 2018 to 2022, he co-led the Greens and helped the party grow in popularity. However, in 2021, he decided to step down and allow Annalena Baerbock, who is the foreign minister, to lead the party's first-ever bid for the chancellorship.
Alice Weidel
With Weidel's contest for the top post, the 46-year-old is making the first bid from the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD). An economist by nature, Weidel joined the party shortly after it was founded in 2013. Since the party first secured seats in Germany's national legislature in 2017, she has served as co-leader of her party's parliamentary group. In 2022, she became a co-leader of the party alongside Tino Chrupalla. and in December, she was nominated as the AfD's candidate for chancellor.
However, other parties have made it clear they won't collaborate with the AfD, so at this point, her chances of becoming chancellor are highly unlikely.
Why Is Germany Holding Snap Elections?
In the country's last federal election in 2021, Scholz's center-left Social Democrats (SPD) formed a coalition with the Greens and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP).
The FDP was the most junior member of the coalition, representing just 11% of the electorate. However, ex-Finance Minister Christian Lindner, the leader of the FDP, openly disagreed with Scholz and other cabinet members on multiple occasions, most notably about the government's 2025 budget.
On November 6, the chancellor asked President Steinmeier to dismiss Lindner, which he did the next day. The FDP The FDP pulled its support from the coalition, leaving Scholz and the Greens as a minority government.
The SPD holds 207 seats in the 733-seat Bundestag, while the Greens have 117.Minority governments are frowned upon in Germany, and the collapse of a coalition is relatively rare compared to other European countries. It has only happened five times since Germany adopted its current constitution in 1949.
(With AP inputs)
German ‘bureaucracy monster’ on everyone’s election hit list
By AFP
February 18, 2025
Slashing bureaucracy was a key demand at a recent Berlin protest called by business groups wanting to revive the stagnating economy - Copyright AFP/File JOSH EDELSON
Clement Kasser with Louis Van Boxel-Woolf in Frankfurt
German politicians make a lot of laws and regulations but on the campaign trail many rage against the country’s notorious bureaucracy, labelling it a monster that needs to be slayed.
Whatever else divides them, almost all candidates in the February 23 vote agree with the popular idea that Europe’s biggest economy needs to slash back its thicket of rules, often labelled a “jungle of paragraphs”.
Some want to take a chainsaw to it all, inspired by Argentina’s neoliberal President Javier Milei, even if their true intent at times may be to weaken troublesome labour or environmental standards.
Conservative poll frontrunner Friedrich Merz — who once famously argued a tax return should fit onto a beer coaster — has vowed to go to war against the “bureaucracy monster”.
Merz and others want to free companies from national and EU reporting obligations, especially the Supply Chain Due Diligence Act, that they regard as headache-inducing as its German tongue twister name, the “Lieferkettensorgfaltspflichtengesetz”.
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, in a controversial recent online chat to support Germany’s far-right AfD, claimed that the approval documents for his Tesla plant near Berlin amounted to an entire truckload of paper, each page stamped by hand.
– ‘Suffocated’ –
At a recent Berlin protest called by business groups who demanded steps to revive the stagnating economy, property firm manager Urs Moeller, 44, fumed about being “suffocated” by red tape.
“The accident insurance people keep inventing new procedures where they do nothing but send us a bill,” he told AFP.
“Taxes and bureaucracy are making it harder and harder to be efficient and pay attractive wages.”
The problem is real, and there is a report to prove it. The number of regulations has grown by 18 percent in Germany since 2014, according to government figures.
Critics charge that the time workers spent doing paperwork is a serious problem for a struggling economy already battered by high energy costs and growing Chinese competition.
Time spent filling in forms cost the German economy 65 billion euros ($67 billion), says the Normenkontrollrat, an independent body advising the government on regulation.
The Ifo economic institute, factoring in a series of indirect costs, puts the figure even higher — at a whopping 146 billion euros or 3.4 percent of German economic output.
Digitisation is often touted as the answer — the foreign ministry this year was proud to announce it had finally moved visa applications online — but IT does not always prove to be the magic bullet.
Lutz Krause, who owns a construction company, said a new electronic invoicing system designed to help the government keep better track of receipts was causing paperwork to multiply.
And there are other issues — he said government clients were now the most difficult to deal with.
To get work on a construction site at Berlin Airport, he said, employees had to pass a security course that included written exams.
“More and more, we’re just avoiding government work,” he said.
– ‘Red tape radar’ –
German bureaucracy, according to Ifo rankings, is far heavier than in France or the Nordic countries, though not as onerous as in some other developed nations.
Like many other Europeans, Germans complain of a rising tide of EU rules emanating in Brussels.
The problem is made worse by German federalism, according to Ifo economist Oliver Falck, since the country’s 16 states often implement EU directives in different ways.
Germany’s tradition of decentralised administration only adds to the problem since “companies often have to give information to someone that they have already given to someone else“, he said.
The western state of Hesse has tried to fight this perception by appointing a minister for de-bureaucratisation, Manfred Pentz.
He is proud of the “red tape radar”, an online service through which 6,700 people have reported problems in dealing with authorities.
“Bureaucracy needs to be tackled so the economy can work again, so people aren’t turned off by the government,” he said.
But economist Falck is sceptical that much will change, having seen little progress in the past 20 years despite the subject never quite leaving the headlines.
Businessman Krause shares that fear: “Germans seem to have paperwork in their DNA.”
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