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Monday, February 24, 2025

in Germany Merz from the Conservative Party Claims Victory

 

Friedrich Merz, with the microphone, the candidate of the mainstream conservative Christian Democratic Union party, shakes hands with Markus Soeder, leader of CSU and Minister-President of Bavaria, at the party headquarters in Berlin, Germany,

German opposition leader Friedrich Merz’s conservatives were on course for a lackluster victory in a national election Sunday, while Alternative for Germany nearly doubled its support, the strongest showing for a far-right party since World War II, projections showed.



Chancellor Olaf Scholz conceded defeat for his center-left Social Democrats after what he called “a bitter election result.” Projections for ARD and ZDF public television showed his party finishing in third place with its worst postwar result in a national parliamentary election.

Merz vowed to move quickly to put together a coalition government. But it wasn’t immediately clear how easy that would be.

The election took place seven months earlier than originally planned after Scholz’s unpopular coalition collapsed in November, three years into a term that was increasingly marred by infighting. There was widespread discontent and not much enthusiasm for any of the candidates.

The campaign was dominated by worries about the years-long stagnation of Europe’s biggest economy and pressure to curb migration — something that caused friction after Merz pushed hard in recent weeks for a tougher approach. It took place against a background of growing uncertainty over the future of Ukraine and Europe’s alliance with the United States.

AfD’s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, said that “we have become the second-strongest force.” The party’s strongest previous showing was 12.6% in 2017, when it first entered the national parliament.

She said that her party is “open for coalition negotiations” with Merz’s party, and that “otherwise, no change of policy is possible in Germany.” But Merz has repeatedly and categorically ruled out working with AfD, as have other mainstream parties.

AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla told cheering supporters that “we have achieved something historic today.”

“We have gained 100%,” he said. “We are now the political center and we have left the fringes behind us.”

Scholz decried AfD’s success. He said that “that must never be something that we will accept. I will not accept it and never will.”

More than 59 million people in the nation of 84 million were eligible to elect the 630 members of the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, who will take their seats under the glass dome of Berlin’s landmark Reichstag building.

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