Germany’s election in 2025
Posted by Thomas Klikauer
On a sunny but cold winter’s day – 23rd of February 2025 – Germans voted for a new parliament. Interestingly, while 76% of Germans voted during the 2021 election, this time it was a whopping 83%.
The 2025 election campaign was extremely short after Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz had lost the support of the parliament in mid-December 2024.
One noticeable fact about Germany’s election is that the conservative-neo-fascist bloc of CDU and AfD received a whopping 49% which is just a touch below the majority of 51%. Historically, this is significant for three reasons:
- Hitler: Adolf Hitler was never elected by a majority of Germans nor did he gain power through a coup d’état.
- Papen: Lacking both, Hitler’s Nazis needed Germany’s conservatives to get into power. The Conservative Franz von Papen was at hand and Germany was on the way to destroy Europe, killing millions and created Auschwitz. The fact that Germany’s conservatism help Hitler was later camouflaged through the myth of a so-called Machtergreifung. The propaganda fiction was invented by the Nazis and – conveniently – carried forward after 1945 by conservatives and compliant historians.
- Haffner: In the recent 2025 election, the neo-fascist AfD received 20.8%. It is almost exactly the 20% that supported Hitler during the 1930s. Around that time, the astute observer and British government advisor – Sebastian Haffner – estimated the support for Hitler’s Nazis to be roughly 20%. The rest were bystanders, opportunists, and the apolitical. Nothing seems to have changed on these numbers between 1933 and 2025: 20% then and 20% today.
Being aware of these historical facts, today’s conservatives have been talking about a firewall between the conservatives and the neo-fascists (the AfD).
This means that German conservatives, at least publicly, refuse to engage with the neo-fascist AfD. Many hope that the firewall policy will be maintained by Germany’s conservative CDU.
Yet, CDU party boss Merz recently used the support of the neo-fascist AfD to get his bill into law. Germany’s leading TV news program called it “the firewall is on fire”. Germans began to wonder; can we trust the conservatives when it comes to the neo-fascist AfD?
In any case, the AfD’s support for Merz conjures up images of the dying days of Weimar (1933) as Hitler and his Nazi thugs set upon destroying democracy – with the kind help from Germany’s conservatives that had put Hitler into power.
Back to today, the once mighty social-democratic SPD gained a measly 16%; the environmentalist “Greens” got 12%; the most progressive semi-socialist party “The Left” regained a lot of ground ending up with a largely unexpected 9%.
These five political parties made it into Germany’s parliament. The rest failed to jump the 5% entry barrier. Among them is the neoliberal FDP party. It received a punishing 4.3%.
The FDP was widely seen as having destroyed the previous SPD/Greens/FDP coalition government. FDP boss and “friend of petti-capitalism” – Lindner – declared his exit from politics.
Surprisingly, the new kid on the bloc – the BSW – also failed to get into Germany’s parliament. It received, according to Germany’s electoral commission, 4.97% – just 0.03% short of entering Germany’s parliament.
For the BSW, the election night turned out to be a nail-biting election thriller. After all had been counted, the BSW did not make it with only receiving exactly 4.972%, missing the 5% barrier by about 14,000 votes – out of a total of 49,927,315 voters.
With the BSW failing to jump the 5% barrier, the following parliamentarian seats will be distributed among the five political parties that made it into Germany’s 630-seat strong parliament with the magic 316 seats needed to get a majority: the conservative CDU: 208 seats; the neo-fascist AfD: 152; SPD: 120; Greens 85; The Left: 64.
This means that the neo-fascist (152) conservative (208) bloc has a clear majority of 360 seats safely passing the needed 316 seats. Together, they can form a “hazelnut” government.
German politics is signified by colours, for example, black for conservatism and brown for fascism.
In other words, a very clear majority of Germans want a government that is run by Germany’s two parties of the right. One is the CDU that traditionally had accompanied many real Nazis during the immediate post-war years.
While the second party is the neo-fascist AfD which is composed of many Neo-Nazis.
If the much-acclaimed firewall holds any water, a CDU/AfD coalition government is most unlikely to happen.
Meanwhile, on the progressives’ side of German politics are: the SPD (120 seats), the Greens (85) and the semi-socialist Die Linke party with 64. While together they have 269 seats, Germany’s progressives are 47 seats short of running the next government.
The first option for a coalition government – the normal state of affairs in Germany – would be a minority government of a progressive SPD-Green-Linke coalition.
This government would need to be tolerated by the conservatives – unless the CDU is handing over fate to the neo-fascist AfD to create a conservative-neo-fascist government. In a recent poll, a whopping 73% of Germans disapprove of such a CDU-AfD coalition government.
If this does not come to pass – which is likely as German mass media are dead-set to keep the Linke out of any coalition government – the next and most viable option is a conservative-social-democratic CDU-SPD government.
This is known as a Grand Coalition. It would have 328 seats passing the needed 316 seats for a majority with comfort.
Interestingly, the social-democratic SPD lost about 1.8 million votes to the conservative CDU while the conservatives themselves lost one million voters to the neo-fascist AfD. The Greens lost 700,000 to the Linke. Meanwhile, the neo-fascist AfD gained a lot of votes from people who previously had not voted: 1.8 million.
Beyond all that, the neo-fascist AfD became the strongest force in all five of the East-German states: Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony, and Thuringia.
In other words, East-Germany is turning more and more neo-fascist. Worse, the most east-ward one goes, the more people vote for the neo-fascist AfD. Roughly, Germany’s west voted for democracy. The east voted for neo-fascism.
According to Germany’s electoral commission, the neo-fascist AfD got 32.5% in the East-German state of Brandenburg. In Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, it became the strongest force with 35% and in Saxony-Anhalt 37%.
While in the home state of Neo-Nazi killer squad, the NSU, the neo-fascist AfD won 37.3% (Saxony). Overall, this is a stunning support for Germany’s Neo-Nazis.
Once again, Germany’s election confirmed what many political science studies have suggested. There is a clear link between educational levels and voting for specific political parties.
For example, Germany’s Greens experience high support from people with university degrees. The opposite is true for the neo-fascist AfD. Its supporters are found to have lower levels of educational achievement.
One might also say, that older people voted for SPD and CDU while younger people voted for Die Linke and, disturbingly, for the neo-fascist AfD.
While there is not too much overall difference on gender, slightly more women tended to vote for the progressive Die Linke while somewhat more men voted for the neo-fascist AfD.
Apart from such details, the general conclusion is that the CDU’s plan to keep the neo-fascist AfD at bay comprehensively failed – it gained the most vote, up by 10.4%.
Germany’s conservative made an often repeated mistake. It took on the key issue of the neo-fascist AfD – migration. By doing that, the CDU not just legitimised it but also gave voters the overall impression that migration is the all-defining issue. On that issue, many of these voters voted for the neo-fascist AfD.
In short, pushing a right-wing populist agenda does not return voters. It does the opposite. It pushes voters towards right-wing populism and neo-fascism.
With the kind support of Germany’s conservatives, Germany’s neo-fascist AfD became the clear winner at the 2025 election.
Since the rise of Germany’s true Nazis during the 1930, we know racism and hate can win elections – sadly.
Photo: The 2025 German parliamentary elections results (source: https://www.bundeswahlleiterin.de/bundestagswahlen/2025.html [German government])
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