The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) improved 1.1 points to 23.7% and its Bavarian sister Christian Social Union (CSU) repeated the result of five years ago with 6.3% support, while the Alternative for Germany (AfD) improved 4.9 points compared to the elections five years ago, according to the official provisional result released this Monday.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Chancellor Olaf Scholz lost 1.9 points to 13.9% and the Greens, partners in the current government coalition, lost 8.6 points to 11.9%. The third partner of the German Government, the Liberal Party (FDP) lost two tenths to 5.2%.
The “Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht – Reason and Justice” (BSW), recently founded around the deputy Sahra Wagenknecht, from The Left, added 6.2% in its first European elections, while her former party lost 2.8 points up to 2.7%.
More right, more extreme right and more electoral participation
Thus, of the 96 European Parliament deputies assigned to Germany, the conservatives will contribute the same number as in 2019, 23 for the CDU and 6 for the CSU.
The AfD rises from 11 to 15 deputies; the SPD loses two, from 16 to 14; and the Greens will have nine less, with 12 instead of 21.
The populist left of the BSW will get 6 deputies, the liberals of the FDP keep their 5 seats, and The Left loses two, with 3 instead of 5.
The rest of the seats will be distributed between the Free Electors (3), Volt (3), The Party (2), Animal Welfare Party (1), Ecological-Democratic Party (ÖDP, 1), Family (1) and Party of the Progress (PdF, 1).
Electoral participation was 64.8%, 3.4 points more than in the 2019 European elections, when it was 61.4%.
Far-right triumph in the east
The AfD won big victories in the eastern German states, which held local elections parallel to the EU elections. In Brandenburg, which surrounds the national capital Berlin, the AfD won the largest share of votes at 25.7%. This represents an increase of 9.8 percentage points compared to the elections five years ago. The conservative CDU and the SPD followed in second and third place.
In the local elections in neighboring Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the AfD ousted the CDU from first place with 25.6% of the vote, meaning it almost doubled its share compared to the last local elections. The CDU came in second place with 24%.
The AfD was also projected to have made significant gains in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, which, like Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, was part of the former East Germany.
Government rejects early elections “like in France”
Germany’s final official results will be announced on July 3, in a public session in the Bundestag, the lower house of the German Parliament.
Meanwhile, pressure is building on Chancellor Scholz’s governing coalition, as the three parties together received less than a third of the votes.
Markus Söder, minister-president and leader of the conservative CSU party in the state of Bavaria, called for early national parliamentary elections as soon as possible, “like in France,” in statements to broadcaster n-tv.
Earlier, CDU Secretary General Carsten Linnemann suggested that Scholz should call a vote of confidence in the Bundestag and blamed his government for the AfD’s results.
“The election date is scheduled for autumn next year and that is what we plan to implement,” government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit reacted in Berlin. “At no time, not for a second, has the idea been raised that new elections could be called now in Germany,” he insisted.
rml (efe, afp, dpa, last update: 12:23 CET)
