Germany: Conservatives celebrate election win but AfD’s historic gains loom

Friedrich Merz‘s conservatives have won Germany’s election, securing a significant victory but falling short of their expected 30% vote share, according to media reports.

“Let’s celebrate tonight, and in the morning we’ll get to work,” he told cheering supporters. His immediate priority is to try to form a government with the third-placed Social Democrats of Olaf Scholz, the BBC reported.

Even before the result was clear, Merz said his top priority was unity in Europe, so that “step by step, we can really achieve independence from the US.”

According to reports, the other big winner in Sunday’s vote was the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), who are celebrating a record second-place result of 20.8pc.

Alice Weidel, the AfD’s candidate for chancellor, secured a victory for her supporters, but her party remained hopeful for a more significant outcome, causing a subdued atmosphere at AfD HQ.

Merz, a 69-year-old German chancellor, has pledged to demonstrate European leadership and increase support for Ukraine if elected as the next chancellor, the report said.

Most Germans have been shocked by President Donald Trump’s conduct towards Ukraine and Europe, and Friedrich Merz said the US leader had shown “the Americans are largely indifferent to the fate of Europe.”

Trump has labelled Ukraine’s leader a “dictator,” and two of his leading figures have openly backed the AfD in the run-up to the vote. Vice-President JD Vance was accused of meddling in the vote during a visit to Munich, while billionaire Elon Musk has made repeated remarks on his X platform.

According to media reports, Friedrich Merz plans to form a coalition with his Christian Democrats and Scholz’s centre left, despite the Social Democrats’ worst-ever performance of 16.4%.

After the collapse of Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition late last year, Merz had asked the electorate for a strong mandate to form a clear-cut coalition with one other party.

In the event, he secured enough seats only because two of the smaller parties failed to get into parliament.

A two-party coalition would enable him to solve as many of Germany’s problems as he could in four years, he said, from a stagnant economy to closing its borders to irregular migrants,the report said.

German voters had other ideas. They came out in big numbers, with an 83% turnout not seen since before reunification in 1990.

Merz’s CDU party leadership will meet on Monday, and so will the Social Democrat SPD’s, separately, but Scholz will not take part in the talks.

Merz is keen to form a government by Easter. It could be possible, because between the two parties they have 328 seats, a majority of 12 in the 630-seat parliament. But it was not until the early hours of Monday that that became clear, the report said.

Weidel also benefitted from a successful TikTok campaign that drew in big numbers of young voters.

As results came in during the early hours of Monday, it became clear the AfD was far ahead of the other parties in the east, with a projected 34% according to a survey for public broadcaster ZDF, the report said.

“Germans have voted for change,” said Alice Weidel. She said Friedrich Merz’s attempt to forge a coalition would ultimately end in failure: “We’ll have fresh elections—Ion’t think we’ll have to wait another four years.”

But just as the election map turned light blue in the east, much of the rest of Germany turned black—the colour of the CDU.

And Merz dismissed the rise of the AfD out of hand. “The party only exists because there have been problems that haven’t been solved. They’re happy if these problems get worse and worse.”

“We need to solve the problems… then that party, the AfD, will disappear.”

Merz was equally withering towards the new Trump administration.

US President Donald Trump did welcome Merz’s victory. He said it was proof that Germans were, like Americans, tired of “the no common sense agenda, especially on energy and immigration.”