With a record-breaking voter turnout of 83.5%, the highest since unification in 1990, Germans cast their polls in an early federal election on February 23. The election had been called after the three-way coalition government of Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens and the neo-liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) collapsed in late 2024.

Based on projections, the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) led by chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz and its sister Christian Social Union (CSU) won the most votes, followed by the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD).

The big winner of the election in terms of voter gains was the far-right AfD, while the SPD, led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz recorded the largest loss of votes compared to previous elections. 

There are 630 seats in the Bundestag, Germany’s parliament. The number of seats a party has is determined by their vote share. A party must receive at least 5% of votes to enter parliament. However, an exception is granted to parties that field winning candidates in at least three electoral districts: winning three individual mandates lifts the 5% threshold for the respective party. 

While the CDU/CSU have won the largest share of votes, they do not have an absolute majority. The party is set to gain 208 seats in the Bundestag. They will need to enter a coalition with another party to secure 316 seats in the Bundestag, the minimum for a majority, and form the next government. The CDU has ruled out a coalition with the AfD, insisting that it is the "firewall" to the far-right. That leaves a two-way grand coalition with the SPD or three-way coalition including the Greens as the most likely options, depending on the final seat distribution. The coalition calculator shows possible coalition outcomes.

Sunday’s election saw voters switching affiliations and moving across the party spectrum. One of the most significant migrations was away from the center-left SPD to the conservative CDU/CSU, which picked up roughly 2 million votes from the Social Democrats. The Left Party benefitted from voter migration from both the SPD and the Greens, adding 540,000 and 600,000 votes respectively.

Young people between the ages of 18 and 24 leaned to the extremes, casting their ballot more often for the far-right AfD and the Left Party. The more traditional parties of SPD and CDU received their lowest voter returns from the younger voters. The Greens, long a favorite for the youth vote, had one of their lowest percentage of votes in this age group. Voters over the age of 60 were more likely to vote SPD and CDU.

Men tended to vote more conservatively than women, casting their ballots more often for the CDU and the AfD, whereas women tended to vote more for the SPD, the Greens and the Left Party. Except for the AfD, the difference in votes according to gender was only a few percentage points.

Voters without a college education were more likely to vote conservative, with the CDU and AfD being their favored parties, followed by the SPD. People with a basic education level were twice as likely to vote AfD as those with higher education. German voters with higher degrees were more than twice as likely to vote for the Greens and the Left Party compared to those with basic education levels.

Edited by: Michaela Cavanagh