The Fallout from Germany's Election

This year’s election campaign in Germany was widely considering to have been quite boring, with dull debates and polls that rarely moved in the weeks and months ahead of the election.  Moreover, it was widely assumed that Chancellor Angela Merkel and her CDU-CSU alliance would easily win the largest share of the vote and have their choice of coalition partners when the election was over.  This was due, in large part, to the fact that for the past few years, the German economy has recorded steady, if unspectacular growth, leading to the illusion that a large majority of German voters were satisfied with the status quo, unlike their counterparts in recent elections in the United States, Britain and elsewhere.  However, this narrative hid the fact that discontent was rife among many German voters.  For example, while Germany’s economy has performed better than that of most of its European neighbors, wage growth has been very low, so many voters had not experienced improvements in their living standards despite the recent run of economic growth.  In addition, 2015’s migration influx has proven to have been very unpopular with a large segment of German voters and has contributed to rising concerns over security-related issues within Germany.  These trends pointed to the possibility that German voters would turn against Chancellor Merkel and the country’s grand coalition government that she has led.

While the polls taken in the weeks leading up to the election were somewhat accurate, they, in the end, overstated the support for Germany’s two dominant political parties and understated the support for four of its smaller parties.  Chancellor Merkel’s center-right CDU-CSU alliance led by a wide margin in the polls ahead of the election, and in the end, managed to win the election by a wide margin over their grand coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).  However, the 33.0% of the vote won by the CDU-CSU was between three- and five-percentage-points below their standing in the polls before the election, and the 238 seats won by the alliance in the election represented a loss of 84 seats.  This was the CDU-CSU’s worst electoral performance in nearly 70 years.  Meanwhile, the SPD had arguably a worse day, winning just 20.5% of the vote and losing 45 seats in the parliament, also their worst result in nearly seven decades.  Overall, the two grand coalition partners, and Germany’s two dominant political forces since the Second World War, managed to win little more than 53% of the popular vote. 

In contrast, smaller parties made major gains in these elections, with four additional parties surpassing the five percent threshold needed to join the CDU-CSU and the SPD in the parliament.  In the wake of these elections, the headlines have been dominated by the fact that the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party finished in third place in these elections, winning 13.0% of the vote and 95 seats in the parliament.  Meanwhile, the center-right Free Democrats returned to the parliament by finishing in fourth place with 10.7% of the vote and 78 seats in the parliament, a result that places them as natural allies of Chancellor Merkel and her party.  In fifth place was The Left (DIE LINKE) party, the successors to East Germany’s former Communist Party, who won 9.2% of the vote and 66 seats in the parliament.  Finally, the left-wing Greens remained in the parliament despite finishing in only sixth place, as they won 8.9% of the vote and 65 seats.  Altogether, the German parliament is now more divided than at any time in the country’s post-war history, with six very diverse parties and alliances holding large chunks of seats in that body.

As has been the case in many other Western countries in recent years, large numbers of voters in Germany have turned their backs on traditional centrist political parties in favor of more radical parties on both the right and the left.  Moreover, while Chancellor Merkel remains Germany’s most popular and trusted politician, her standing has been damaged by 2015’s migration crisis, as well the fact that she has simply been in power for so long (since 2005).  As a result, the CDU-CSU alliance lost a huge share of their seats in the parliament, a development that would normally weaken its grip on power.  However, a similarly terrible result for Germany’s second-leading party, the Social Democrats, will almost certainly allow Chancellor Merkel to remain in office.  Earlier in the year, the SPD had surged in the polls when former European Parliament President Martin Schulz was selected as the party leader, but he ran a very poor campaign and the party ended up with a nightmare result.  In fact, the total number of votes won by other left-leaning political parties in this election nearly equaled that of the SPD’s total vote, suggesting that the party’s hold on the political left in Germany is in serious jeopardy.

While the decline of Germany’s traditionally-dominant parties was a notable development, the story of the 2017 elections in Germany was the rise of the country’s smaller parties.  Of these, it has been the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) that has caught the world’s attention, as it is the first far-right political party to win such as large share of the vote in Germany since the country’s defeat in the Second World War.  Clearly, the AfD benefitted from the growing opposition to Chancellor Merkel’s decision to allow more than one million migrants and refugees to enter Germany, as well as from rising concerns over the impact on German security and stability stemming from this surge in migration.  On the other end of the political spectrum, the radical Left party remains extremely strong in eastern areas of Germany, where living standards for people in many areas remain well below those of their compatriots in the west.  More towards the political center, the Free Democrats emerged as the champion of traditional German policies with regards to the European Union, as many Germans oppose potential concessions to France and other EU member states with regards to fiscal or economic policy within the EU.  Finally, the Greens were able to hold their ground in these elections, and could play a key role in the formation of a new government.  Altogether, German politics, like the politics of so many other countries in the West, is growing increasingly fragmented.

Entering this election, there was little desire among many German political leaders for yet another grand coalition government led by Chancellor Merkel and including the CDU-CSU and the Social Democrats.  After their party’s terrible performance, SPD leaders quickly ruled out the formation of just such as government, although many believe that some elements of the party are likely to reconsider this position.  However, a new grand coalition would leave the far-right AfD as the leaders of the political opposition in Germany, something most Social Democratic supporters would abhor.  If a grand coalition is out of the question, then there is only one other realistic outcome.  That would be the so-called “Jamaica” coalition consisting of the CDU-CSU, the Free Democrats and the Greens.  However, such a coalition would likely prove quite unwieldy.  For example, the Free Democrats would make it very difficult for Germany to reach a deal on reforms to the European Union with more reform-minded leaders of the EU such as French President Emmanuel Macron.  Also, the left-leaning Greens would struggle to reconcile their economic positions with their more liberal CDU-CSU and FDP partners.  What is certain is that 2017’s elections will mark a watershed in German politics, with the country’s traditionally-dominant political parties weakened and with smaller parties enjoying higher-and-higher levels of support.  We’ve seen this play out already is so many countries in the West in recent years and it likely means that governing Germany will become much more difficult in the future, with gridlock an ever-increasing threat to German political well-being.