German election: Who won, who lost and what’s next?

The conservative Christian Democrats have won Germany’s national election,

putting them on track to lead the next coalition government, according to provisional results.

The outcome means the party’s leader, Friedrich Merz, will likely be Germany’s next chancellor. Here’s a breakdown of Sunday’s election results and what to expect from Germany’s next leadership:

What were the key outcomes of the German election?
Conservative and right-wing parties emerged on top. The mainstream conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), along with its partner, the Christian Social Union (CSU), finished first with 28.6 percent of the vote, while the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) surged into second with 20.8 percent, according to provisional results announced by election authorities.

The Social Democratic Party (SPD) came in third with just 16.4 percent, a nearly 10-point drop from their first-place finish in 2021. Outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz of SPD acknowledged a “bitter” defeat, saying “the election result is poor and I bear responsibility”.

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Germany’s Greens and the far-left Die Linke, or The Left, party exceeded the 5 percent threshold to secure seats in parliament, with 11.6 percent and 8.8 percent, respectively.

As a result, the CDU/CSU partnership is projected to secure 208 seats in the Bundestag, the German parliament, the AfD 152, the SPD 120, the Greens 85 and The Left 64.

Who is Friedrich Merz, Germany’s likely next chancellor?
The 69-year-old CDU leader is a multimillionaire lawyer who has been in and out of politics for decades. He was first elected to the European Parliament in 1989, and by 2000 had become chairman of the CDU’s parliamentary alliance. However, fellow party member Angela Merkel eventually pushed Merz aside, and he left parliament in 2009 to jump into the private sector, working for multinational companies like Mayer Brown and BlackRock Germany. Merz was re-elected leader of the CDU in 2022 after Merkel retired from politics following her 16-year-long stint as the country’s chancellor. A social conservative who has broached the idea of a new European defence coalition, Merz says he plans to govern Germany “reliably” and push for European “independence” from the United States.

“That is my absolute priority, I have no illusions at all about what will come out of America,” Merz said on Sunday, amid growing public differences between European leaders and US President Donald Trump over Ukraine and US security cover for Europe… The AfD’s rise highlights its growing populist appeal among voters who are critical of immigration and the European Union, especially in eastern Germany, where it outperformed all other parties.

Despite little chance of the AfD being invited into a coalition, the party, led by 46-year-old Alice Weidel, is celebrating what it believes to be a victory, positioning a once-fringe force firmly in the mainstream of Europe’s right wing… see more here