Germans head to the polls in critical election with far-right gains expected

Germans headed to the polls on Sunday to vote in the 2025 federal election, which is all but guaranteed to result in a new chancellor taking over from Olaf Scholz to lead Europe's largest economy.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its affiliate the Christian Social Union (CSU) have been polling in first place in the lead-up to the election, putting their lead candidate Friedrich Merz in line for chancellorship.

The far-right Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) is expected to come second in line, ahead of Scholz's Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the Greens, which have also been part of the most recent ruling coalition that collapsed late last year.

This marks a shift from the 2021 election, when the SPD came out on top, followed by the CDU/CSU. The AfD clinched fourth place at the time.

Germans will cast two votes at the polls, one to directly elect a member of parliament to represent their constituency and one for a party list. The second vote will determine the proportional make-up of the German Parliament, the Bundestag, with parties sending their candidates to Berlin to ensure representation.

There is also a 5% threshold that parties need to meet to deploy delegates to the Bundestag. Several of the smaller parties, including The Left, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), have long been polling around this mark, with The Left picking up slightly in recent days.

Attention will shift to the coalition building process after the vote. It is rare for a German party to obtain an absolute majority, and whichever group secures the largest number of seats in parliament usually still has to find governance partners to secure a ruling majority.

This process can take weeks or even months — parties hold extensive negotiations before then inking a coalition agreement detailing their joint policy positions and plans.

"Latest polls indicate that the Conservatives (CDU/CSU) will receive the highest share of votes, but they will need one or two (unlikely) coalition partners, likely the SPD and/or the Greens," Deutsche Bank analysts said in a note earlier this week.

All major parties have said that they will not enter a coalition with the far-right AfD. The party's result will still be watched closely due to its growth in popularity, despite a string of controversies and investigations into its conduct, which have also triggered nationwide protests.

The smaller parties will also be in focus this election — their entry into parliament could influence whether a third coalition partner is needed to form a majority government. They could also be key if the new government wants to make any changes to the constitution, which require the support of a two-thirds majority that the smaller parties could effectively block from happening.

The election is taking place several months earlier than originally planned due to the break-up of the so-called traffic light coalition — which was comprised of Scholz' SPD, the Green party and the FDP — in November. The alliance had been in power since taking over from long-standing chancellor Angela Merkel in 2021.

Months of political wrangling and disagreements within the coalition about economic, fiscal and budget policy ultimately led to the government's collapse, as Scholz fired former Finance Minister Christian Lindner.

Steps were then taken to trigger a snap election — which has only happened three other times in Germany's history. Scholz first had to call for a confidence vote in himself in the country's parliament, before suggesting the the latter's dissolution to German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.

The head of state then disbanded the lower house of parliament, setting the Sunday election date.