🇩🇪 German federal election, 23 February 2025

[Arson Plus]

What is with the FDP having a large constituency vote given how they haven't won a seat since the 1950s?

[President Johnson]

Tagesschau is reporting that Mutti Merkel hasn't congretulated Merz yet. Lmao. I wonder who she voted for.

[RGM2609]

Tagesschau is reporting that Mutti Merkel hasn't congretulated Merz yet. Lmao. I wonder who she voted for.

Didn't her positions result in an SPD vote even back when she was leading the CDU? XD

[Sir Mohamed]

What are the reasons traditional major parties CDU and SPD performed so weak among young voters? Are they incompetent in social media campaigns? I suppose that's the major reason and because content of the Left and Afd are more enraging, therefore reach more people.

[Oryxslayer]

What are the reasons traditional major parties CDU and SPD performed so weak among young voters? Are they incompetent in social media campaigns? I suppose that's the major reason and because content of the Left and Afd are more enraging, therefore reach more people.

It's a normal thing, though the parties changed. In the past it was the FDP and greens who got large Youth shares versus the Union and SPDs pitiful numbers.

In a modern multiparty system, you don't need to appeal to everyone. In both parties cases, the bases they appeal to and build from are middle aged to older, something very common in Western Europe. For the left it's Pensioners, Union members, and(usually) working minority groups. For the Right it's retired folks, smalltown traditional voters, monied suburbs, and religious communities - in many cases (not just here) Catholics. Because voters change parties semi-frequently, age gaps like this aren't terminal issues, but they have contributed to a gradual leveling down of the older parties. Those who were politicized into older few/two party/block politics are dying and are replaced by those who only know to expect many parties on offer.

[Vosem]

What are the reasons traditional major parties CDU and SPD performed so weak among young voters? Are they incompetent in social media campaigns? I suppose that's the major reason and because content of the Left and Afd are more enraging, therefore reach more people.

I think in every society older people have a higher turnout than young people (...and older people also have less turnover than young people, who become older people at a somewhat faster rate than old people die off -- that's what it means to be an aging society!), and so the most successful parties are always those which prioritize the concerns of older voters. In a multiparty society, this means it will always seem to be the case that younger voters disproportionately support smaller or more marginal political movements.

What is with the FDP having a large constituency vote given how they haven't won a seat since the 1950s?

A lot of the FDP vote seems to come from a place of "right-wing, but for some reason they find CDU and AfD both unacceptable"; that means you'd support FDP across the board, on the Erststimme as well as the Zweitstimme. (In general, my perspective is that most Germans vote the same way on both ballots, with only a little bit of leeway given for tactical voting or particularly popular local candidates. SPD seems to have done particularly well on the Erststimme this time around, with there being lots of seats that are Erststimme SPD/Zweitstimme CDU -- MaynardFriedman speculates that this is because BSW didn't run many Erststimme candidates and many BSW supporters had SPD as their second choice, and I think the math for this hypothesis checks out, but I wonder if the simpler answer might not be that the SPD had many popular incumbents, since they did really well in 2021. 'Sophomore surge' is a cross-culturally pretty common phenomenon.)

[Helsinkian]

So who exactly are the 260 thousand people who voted for the FDP in 2021 and now voted for the BSW?

(Source: https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-results-and-voter-demographics-explained-in-charts/a-71724186 , voter migration)

[minionofmidas]

Okay, I wasn't prepared to see quite so much purple.
Lots of stuff going on here. Very obvious the huge Left swing wasn't so much a youth swing (though it was that as well!) as an estates, and migrant background, swing. Also some red in places where I haven't seen any, at least in 3rd place citywide elections, for a while. Very low shares of the vote, mind. Higher CDU margins than recently seen in the poshlands due to the FDP collapse.

[#UnbanTender]

There are 4 constituencies that will have no representation at all on both district and list level.

1. Darmstadt, Hesse
2. Stuttgart II, BW
3. Lörrach – Müllheim, BW
4. Tübingen, BW

[oldtimer]

As I already pointed out yesterday, another pressing issue is defense policy, as Union, SPD and Greens narrowly failed to secure a two thirds majority.  In the median run, another significant increase defense spending is necessary, especially once the 100 billion special fund will be depleted by 2027. Establishing a new special fund or implementing a massive rise in defense expenditures will only be possible with a two-thirds majority due to the debt brake enshrined in the German Constitution. Another option is to modify the debt brake, which also requires a two-thirds majority.

The Greens have already suggested to ram through a package during the current Bundestag, whose term will likely expire on March 25. Germany doesn't usually have lame duck sessions as we know it from the US, but that could indeed be an option. It seems like Friedrich Merz has already realized this. Today, he expressed his intention to speak with the SPD, the Greens and the FDP about what reforms the Bundestag could still decide on in its current composition. At a press conference, Merz pointed out that there are a number of issues that require a two-thirds majority in parliament. This includes the appointment of judges to the Federal Constitutional Court, but also a reform of the debt brake. Other CDU politicians and also Finance Minister Jörg Kukies (SPD) had expressed skepticism as to whether such a rapid reorganization of the rules on limiting borrowing enshrined in the Basic Law was necessary and correct.

I really hope Boris Pistorius will remain Defense Minister now. It's pretty much a given that he will stay in the cabinet and emerge as the SPD's power center in the executive branch. Meanwhile, co-leader Lars Klingbeil is set to become caucus leader as well.

There is a bigger issue down the road, the obvious death of the SPD in the next election.

With the current opposition, the SPD will plow new depths in 2029.

Mertz said he doesn't what the destruction of the SPD, but that looks inevitable.

[#UnbanTender]

Merz says he wants to change the electoral system again. Thank God, Ampel's second biggest crime will soon be history.
https://www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/bundestagswahl-2025-friedrich-merz-will-wahlrecht-wieder-aendern-a-9e383dbb-a292-4927-b8ff-046ecaf63afd

[DavidB.]

So who exactly are the 260 thousand people who voted for the FDP in 2021 and now voted for the BSW?

(Source: https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-results-and-voter-demographics-explained-in-charts/a-71724186 , voter migration)

Difficult one, but my two guesses:
1. Lower info voters with an eclectic set of views who want "change", but are not far-left or far-right and don't want to vote for parties with that sort of stigma (Linke, AfD).
2. Immigration-critical voters who don't want to vote for AfD and don't believe CDU/CSU on the issue after Merkel. In 2021, FDP was the most immigration-critical option on the menu after AfD. This time, it was BSW (if you count out CDU/CSU).

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

So who exactly are the 260 thousand people who voted for the FDP in 2021 and now voted for the BSW?

(Source: https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-results-and-voter-demographics-explained-in-charts/a-71724186 , voter migration)

Difficult one, but my two guesses:
1. Lower info voters with an eclectic set of views who want "change", but are not far-left or far-right and don't want to vote for parties with that sort of stigma (Linke, AfD).
2. Immigration-critical voters who don't want to vote for AfD and don't believe CDU/CSU on the issue after Merkel. In 2021, FDP was the most immigration-critical option on the menu after AfD. This time, it was BSW (if you count out CDU/CSU).

I think the soft anti-lockdown stance of the FDP in 2021 was far more important. Their stance was that we should take the pandemic seriously, but the restrictions that dragged into 2021 and 2022 were too arbitrary and strict. They got a lot of votes from unusual places in that election, so now those voters are leaving in all directions

[#UnbanTender]

Potsdam, 5 parties between 16-18%

Linke 17.7%
SPD 17.2%
AFD 16.9%
CDU 16.3%
Greens 16.1%
BSW 8.7%
FDP 3.8%

[Ethelberth]

First time since nineties, Göttingen and Tübingen (important university cities) have no green MPs.

[President Johnson]

A few trivial facts:

* SPD has always lost the chancellorship through non-regular elections: 1982 via no-confidence vote, 2005 and 2025 through a snap election. Every time CDU lost the chancellorship (1969, 1998 and 2021) was through a regular election.

* 1998 remains the only election in which all governing parties were replaced. During every other turnover, one governing party remained part of the incoming coalition.

* Friedrich Merz will be the second oldest chancellor upon taking office at 69, only surpassed by Konrad Adenauer (who was 73 in 1949 and 87 when he left office in 1963, which is even older than Biden would have been in 2028). This will also mark the first time ever a chancellor will be older than his predecessor. Every other chancellor had a successor that was younger.

* The emerging "grand" coalition has only a 12-seat majority, which is smaller than previous "small coalitions" like Red-Green in 1998 and most of Kohl's Black-Yellow-Coalitions. Even traffic light had 57% of seats in the last term, which was a slightly larger majority than Cabinet Merkel IV (56%).

* Merz will be the first CDU chancellor not to hold a doctorate degree. All previous CDU chancellors held one. All SPD chancellors didn't.

* Friedrich Merz will also be the first chancellor since Konrad Adenauer who never held a position in the executive branch (Adenauer was mayor of Cologne at some point though). All other chancellors were either a cabinet minister and/or minister-president of a state. Angela Merkel remains the person who was a member of the federal government (executive) longer than anyone else (youth and later family minister under Kohl 1991-1998 and chancellor 2005-2021).

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

I think it's a bit of an insult to reduce Die Linke's surge purely to TikTok.

Obviously, going viral had an effect, but it should be remembered that Die Linke's membership numbers were rising as soon as Wagenknecht left, and their poll numbers were creeping up ever so slightly before Reichinnek went viral with her speech against Merz. Die Linke had launched several grassroots direct action campaigns for things that were not strictly political (e.g. the rent calculator and energy bill calculator on their website I previously mentioned), and had a very well received party convention and platform. BSW was also disintegrating progressively around the turn of the year. By all accounts, Die Linke had a very motivated campaign volunteer pool who made a big difference.

I think it's possible that if Merz hadn't voted with the CDU, Die Linke still may have surprised us on election night, but may have landed just under/over the 5% barrier. But we'll never know.

There doesn't seem to be much of a correlation of TikTok engagement to votes, other than the two parties that were strong amongst young people were popular on an app used by young people. It just really helped them get that spark they needed:

[President Johnson]

Worth noting is that Marine Le Pen hasn't expressed congratulations to AfD, which speaks volumes how insane the party has become.

Also, I just watched Söder's press conference from earlier today. Funny how he ridiculed the pathetic performance of the Free Voters in Bavaria. He even singled out Hubert Aiwanger's (his own deputy in the Bavarian state government) weak result in his district and said the Free Voters need to "bake smaller bread". This guy is always great for entertainment. He also wants to play a major role in the coalition roundtables. I assume that was a price Merz had to pay to ensure Söder's support for his own candidacy.

[Oryxslayer]

Worth noting is that Marine Le Pen hasn't expressed congratulations to AfD, which speaks volumes how insane the party has become.

Also, I just watched Söder's press conference from earlier today. Funny how he ridiculed the pathetic performance of the Free Voters in Bavaria. He even singled out Hubert Aiwanger's (his own deputy in the Bavarian state government) weak result in his district and said the Free Voters need to "bake smaller bread". This guy is always great for entertainment. He also wants to play a major role in the coalition roundtables. I assume that was a price Merz had to pay to ensure Söder's support for his own candidacy.

The guy wants to win national prizes but can't stop playing Bavarian games. Presently his two biggest real opponents are the FW and Greens...so who does he single out...

[Don't Tread on Me]

The East/West divide within Germany is stunning. Historically the SPD held on in the Northeast, but it seems like the people there have been drawn to the AfD potentially in part due to their anti-west stance on foreign policy. If this holds in future elections then it reminds me of the collapse of the Democratic Party in parts of the Midwest and Northeast of the US.

[buritobr]

Olaf Scholz should start to think which song he will ask for the military band to play for him

[seeking mystical annihilation]

(Adenauer was mayor of Cologne at some point though).

In the Weimar era, as a member of Zentrum.

[Oryxslayer]

The East/West divide within Germany is stunning. Historically the SPD held on in the Northeast, but it seems like the people there have been drawn to the AfD potentially in part due to their anti-west stance on foreign policy. If this holds in future elections then it reminds me of the collapse of the Democratic Party in parts of the Midwest and Northeast of the US.

You missed he boat yesterday evening, that was the time to use to results to further a domestic US agenda or bias.

But to take up the offer - there is nowhere in the US like East Germany. There is frankly almost no place in the world like it: a large portion of the country and population severed from the established political ecosystem, refashioned into an entirely foreign one, and then reattached to the original system in a process that can at best be described as both chaotic and still incomplete. The state has not given up, but much of society has, and that divergence shows.

That was only 35 years ago, there has been no time for any federal political 'history' to develop, unlike the West where there are clear areas with Leans and Loyalties. From 1990 to 2021 eastern federal results are almost always a case of a (sometimes complete) landside for the winning Federal party. That's because the defining feature of the East for the same period is not partisan ties, but that a large portion of the population was never satisfied with what they had been delt. Those committed to the system fluctuated with it, but more importantly opposed the dissenters - initially PDS/Linke. Nothing shows this better than the state elections, where once the system voters found a party they more or less stuck by it to prevent the anti-system parties from winning: SPD in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Union in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia.

But we have had very unequal generational replacement: those who remember the Cold War or reunification, be it a positive or negative light, are leaving the scene and their replacements are heading west. Those who stay have developed a new dissention in the classic mold of the generation handover - they don't remember of have nostalgia for the past, they have rose-tinted glasses and self-constructed ideas about a past they never knew and can therefore idealize.

[Oryxslayer]

Also, Since the prediction thread never got unlocked, I'll post the end results of the secondary prediction list I assembled for all other participants. You can check how I stacked up there, but there I never expected to get a ton right. I would say most, beyond the obvious but necessary ones, ended up uncertain until the count, making it a successful exercise.

Prefaced Predictions

5 Party Parliament, Linke and FDP miss: Yes
Union-SPD and Union-Greens both Mathematically possible Options: No
Parties below the threshold underperform: Yes, all except BSW

____________________________

Second Vote

AfD Leads in all 5 Former East German States: Yes
Union Leads in all 8 former West German States: Yes
Who Wins Berlin: Linke
Who Wins Hamburg: - SPD
Who Wins Bremen? - SPD
AfD above or below 2024 state election% in Thuringia, Saxony, and Brandenburg, 3 Q's: Yes on All, though closer in Brandenburg

CSU above or below 2017 result in Bavaria, if above, above or below 2009 result: Below, both. Some of the Union's 'automatic' Catholic voters, from across the nation, did not go Union this time.

CDU's best State by percentage: Baden-Württemberg
SPD's best State by percentage: IF you don't count Bremen, Lower Saxony, But Bremen had a slightly better percentage

Will AfD's best State still be Saxony: - No, Thuringia
AfD's best Western State by Percentage:  Saarland
Will the Green's best State still be Hamburg: Yes
Linke's best state by percentage: Berlin, and not even close
BSW's best state by percentage: Saxony-Anhalt
FDP's best state by percentage:2021 Baden-Württemberg
Does SSW retain their seat: Yes
___________________________________

First Vote, direct districts

CSU wins Every direct seat in Bavaria: Yes
CDU wins every direct seat in Baden-Württemberg: No
CDU Wins every direct seat in Schleswig-Holstein: No
CDU Wins every direct seat in Rhineland-Palatinate: No
CDU Wins every direct seat in Saarland: No
Cloppenburg – Vechta continues to be the best Union direct seat? Above 60%: No, and a shock it was. I think the only direct candidate to get above 50% anywhere was Dorothee Bär with a strong personal vote in Bad Kissingen.

AfD above or below 45 direct seats, aka sweeping the winnable East: Yes, 46 by a hair
AfD wins a direct seat in Berlin like YouGov hypothesizes: Yes, by the same hair. But YouGov still F'ed up in Berlin - and elsewhere - they just lucked out in Hellersdorf.

Freak AfD vote-split direct win in the west: No, but Kaiserslautern shows that if the SPD did replace Scholz and successfully divide the centrist vote, there could have been one somewhere.

SPD holds all 18 core Rhine-Rhur direct seats not lost during the Merkel Years: No, lost 4

SPD holds both Bremen Seats: Yes, by 353 votes
SPD holds something the Union won in all of 2009, 2013, and in 2017: Yes, there were two. Homburg in Saarland was a predicted tossup, Lüchow-Dannenberg – Lüneburg was a shock victory for tactical voting.

Greens win 10 or more Direct seats: Yes
Greens win more than one direct seat not won in 2021: Yes, 3. Tempelhof-Schöneberg, Köln III, and Kiel - all off the SPD

Linke holds all 2021 direct seats: Yes
Linke wins more direct seats? If yes, outside of Berlin: Yes to both, Ramelow in Erfurt
Freak Linke direct seat win in the West: Do we count West Berlin as the West? Nah
Merz's seat of Hochsauerlandkreis was the 7th best CDU direct result in 2021. Stay top ten, Become top 5: Yes to both, I think he's #2 for the CDU.
Does Scholz hold Potsdam: Was a complete clusterF, but Yes
Does Habeck hold Flensburg – Schleswig: No, and blame mostly goes to the SSW
Alice Weidel over or under 15% in Bodensee:  Over, she actually got a 1.5% personal vote

[Don't Tread on Me]

The East/West divide within Germany is stunning. Historically the SPD held on in the Northeast, but it seems like the people there have been drawn to the AfD potentially in part due to their anti-west stance on foreign policy. If this holds in future elections then it reminds me of the collapse of the Democratic Party in parts of the Midwest and Northeast of the US.

You missed he boat yesterday evening, that was the time to use to results to further a domestic US agenda or bias.

But to take up the offer - there is nowhere in the US like East Germany. There is frankly almost no place in the world like it: a large portion of the country and population severed from the established political ecosystem, refashioned into an entirely foreign one, and then reattached to the original system in a process that can at best be described as both chaotic and still incomplete. The state has not given up, but much of society has, and that divergence shows.

That was only 35 years ago, there has been no time for any federal political 'history' to develop, unlike the West where there are clear areas with Leans and Loyalties. From 1990 to 2021 eastern federal results are almost always a case of a (sometimes complete) landside for the winning Federal party. That's because the defining feature of the East for the same period is not partisan ties, but that a large portion of the population was never satisfied with what they had been delt. Those committed to the system fluctuated with it, but more importantly opposed the dissenters - initially PDS/Linke. Nothing shows this better than the state elections, where once the system voters found a party they more or less stuck by it to prevent the anti-system parties from winning: SPD in Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Union in Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia.

But we have had very unequal generational replacement: those who remember the Cold War or reunification, be it a positive or negative light, are leaving the scene and their replacements are heading west. Those who stay have developed a new dissention in the classic mold of the generation handover - they don't remember of have nostalgia for the past, they have rose-tinted glasses and self-constructed ideas about a past they never knew and can therefore idealize.

Nobody's pushing an agenda, I was pointing out an observation.