Berlin:

Germany is set to hold the crucial federal election on Sunday (February 23) to elect its next chancellor. The snap polls were called by chancellor Olaf Scholz when his coalition government fell apart at the end of last year, the results of which will shape the future of Europe’s most influential nation and the European Union.

In the race for top leader is an incumbent chancellor seeking a second term, the opposition leader, the current vice chancellor and — for the first time — a popular leader of a far-right party. The elections are receiving an unusual level of interest from onlookers outside the country, including the world’s richest man Elon Musk, who caused an outcry in Germany by throwing his weight behind the far-right Alternative Alice Weidel.

A Look At Top Contenders 

Olaf Scholz: The 66-year-old centre-left Social Democrat has been Germany’s chancellor since December 2021. Seeking a second term, Scholz has a wealth of government experience, having previously served as Hamburg’s mayor and as German labour and finance minister. 

As chancellor, Scholz launched an effort to modernize Germany’s military after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and made Germany Ukraine’s second-biggest weapons supplier. His government prevented an energy crunch and tried to counter high inflation. But his three-party coalition became notorious for infighting and collapsed in November as it argued over how to revitalize the economy — Europe’s biggest, which has shrunk for the past two years.

Friedrich Merz: Germany’s 69-year-old opposition leader has emerged as the front-runner in the election campaign, with his centre-right Union bloc leading polls. Merz became the leader of his Christian Democratic Union party after longtime Chancellor Angela Merkel — a former rival — stepped down in 2021. Since then, he has taken the party in a more conservative direction. 

During the election campaign, Merz has made curbing irregular migration a central issue. However, he lacks experience in government. He joined the European Parliament in 1989 before becoming a lawmaker in Germany five years later. He took a break from active politics for several years after 2009, practising as a lawyer and heading the supervisory board of investment manager BlackRock’s German branch.

Robert Habeck: The 55-year-old Habeck is the candidate of the environmentalist Greens. He’s also Germany’s current vice chancellor and the economy and climate minister, with responsibility for energy issues. As co-leader of the Greens from 2018 to 2022, he presided over a rise in the party’s popularity, but in 2021 he stepped aside to let Annalena Baerbock — now Germany’s foreign minister — make the party’s first run for the chancellor’s job. 

Habeck’s record as a minister has drawn mixed reviews, particularly a plan his ministry drew up to replace fossil-fuel heating systems with greener alternatives that deepened divisions in the government.

Alice Weidel: The 46-year-old Weidel is making the first bid of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD, for the country’s top job. An economist by training, Weidel joined the party shortly after it was founded in 2013. She has been co-leader of her party’s parliamentary group since the party first won seats in the national legislature in 2017. 

Weidel has been a co-leader of the party itself since 2022, along with Tino Chrupalla. In December, she was nominated as the candidate for chancellor — though other parties say they won’t work with the AfD, so she has no realistic path to the top job at present.

When Will The Results Come?

It is likely to take several days after February 23 to confirm the final results of the election. However, based on the exit polls, fairly reliable results are likely to be out by Sunday evening, but there may still be some uncertainty as the counting of votes by post (a trend which is on the rise) takes time. The performance of smaller parties will also factor in result timing as Germany has a norm of electing a coalition government. 

Even after the full results are out, forming a new government will, most likely, take some time as talks between parties on coalition will start only after the results. The coalition might take several months to put a government together. It depends on the numbers at play and the political arithmetic – essentially the extent to which different combinations of parties agree or disagree on various policy positions.

Why Germany Forms Coalition Governments?

The proportional voting system and increased political fracturing in Germany make it extremely difficult for any one party to form a government alone and a coalition needs to be formed comprising parties that together hold more than 50 per cent of the seats in the Bundestag — the national parliament.

It is also partly political culture in Germany to prefer stable majorities as minority governments are considered to be too weak and unstable. 

Until the early 1980s, there were usually three parties (conservative, social democrats and liberals) in Parliament. However, currently, the country has seven parties in the Bundestag.

Parties In Fray 

Germany has two centrist, “big-tent” parties: Scholz’s centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and the opposition conservatives, an alliance of the Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU).

Both have lost support in recent years, with smaller parties such as the Greens and far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) gaining ground.

The SPD, conservatives, Greens and AfD are all fielding candidates for chancellor.

Also running are the pro-market Free Democrats (FDP), the far-left Linke and the leftist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), who are all at risk of missing the 5 per cent threshold to make it into parliament, according to opinion polls.

Polls

The conservatives have been leading nationwide polls for more than two years and are at 30 per cent, according to the latest survey published by Forsa Institute on February 16, followed by the AfD at 20 per cent.

Scholz’s SPD, with 16 per cent, has dropped to third from the first place it achieved in the 2021 election. It is followed by the Greens on 13 per cent and Linke on 7 per cent. The FDP is polling at 5 per cent, with the BSW at 4 per cent, according to the latest poll.

Analysts say polls can shift quickly as voters are less loyal to parties than they once were. In the 2021 election campaign, the conservatives went from frontrunner to runner-up within a few months.

(from left) Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz and Donald Tusk at a press conference at the Chancellery in Berlin on March 15.
| Photo Credit: AFP

French President Emmanuel Macron said in an interview published on March 16 evening that Western ground operations in Ukraine might be necessary “at some point”, days after meeting with German and Polish leaders.

Last month Mr. Macron refused to rule out putting troops on the ground in Ukraine, which prompted a stern response from Berlin and other European partners.

But the French President has not recanted from his position, but stressed that Western allies would not take the initiative.

“Maybe at some point — I don’t want it, I won’t take the initiative — we will have to have operations on the ground, whatever they may be, to counter the Russian forces,” Mr. Macron told newspaper Le Parisien in an interview conducted on March 15.

“France’s strength is that we can do it”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz reacted angrily to Mr. Macron’s earlier refusal to rule out sending troops to Ukraine and his pointed comments urging allies not to be “cowards”.

Mr. Macron met his German and Polish counterparts in Berlin on Friday, in a show of solidarity behind Kyiv.

After the meeting, Mr. Macron said the three countries of the so-called Weimar Triangle were “united” in their aim to “never let Russia win”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
| Photo Credit: AFP

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s beleaguered coalition was counting the cost on October 9 of heavy losses at two State elections halfway into its term, which also saw the far right make strong gains.

All three parties in the coalition— Mr. Scholz’s centre-left SPD, the Greens and the liberal FDP— saw support fall on October 8 in the southern region of Bavaria, the country’s biggest State, and Hesse in the west.

The main conservative opposition won in both polls, as expected, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) gained more ground, causing fresh concern about their growing appeal.

Nearly 14 million people were eligible to vote in the States, almost one in five of Germany’s electorate. The polls were seen as a crucial indicator of the population’s mood, with surging immigration and economic woes among key topics.

“It is clear who won the vote: populism,” said news weekly Der Spiegel while the top-selling Bild said a whopping 80 percent of Sunday’s voters were calling for a change in migration policy, citing polling institute Infratest dimap.

Two years after coming to power, the polls were a kind of “interim report card” for Mr. Scholz’s coalition, Der Spiegel said.

“The results are disastrous,” it went on. “The coalition needs a reset if it wants to be re-elected in two years.”

For the anti-immigration AfD, the votes were the latest sign of growing momentum and showed their appeal was extending beyond their traditional strongholds in the ex-communist east.

The elections came after a torrid two years for Scholz’s government, which has had to contend with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and an ensuing energy crisis that plunged Germany into recession.

Adding to the problems, the chancellor’s coalition has been consumed by bitter infighting on issues ranging from climate laws to spending cuts.

However, Mr. Scholz’s spokesman Steffen Hebestreit sought to play down the vote setbacks, saying the government was on course to tackle the most pressing issues facing the country.

“The Chancellor is convinced that the government is doing a good job, that it has the right positions and is charting the right course for the longer term,” he told reporters.

Not helping the cause of the SPD and its coalition partners, both states are conservative strongholds. Hesse had been ruled for 24 years by the main opposition CDU and Bavaria since 1957 by the CSU, headed by Markus Soeder.

The SPD had sought to gain ground in Hesse by fielding a heavyweight to run for state premier, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser.

But the party won just 15% of the vote, almost five percentage points below its last result in 2018.

The CDU maintained its first place in Hesse and extended its lead by over seven points to 34.6%.

State premier Boris Rhein is thus set to retain his job, while Ms. Faeser is left facing questions about her political future.

SPD party leader Saskia Esken said the poor showing underlined that the government in Berlin must speed up its response on migration in particular.

“We have got to seal migration agreements with the main countries of origin now,” she told public broadcaster ARD.

The AfD looked to have gained about five percentage points in both Bavaria and Hesse, building on recent local poll wins, although the mainstreams parties have ruled out cooperation with it in government.

Immigration was a central theme at the polls as Germany— like elsewhere in Europe— faces a surge of new arrivals, reviving memories of a major influx in 2015.

The victory of the CSU— the sister party of the CDU— in Bavaria was widely expected and State Premier Mr. Soeder will retain his post.

But with vote projections showing the party’s worst result for decades, it could deal a blow to his ambitions to one day stand as a Chancellor candidate.