Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Helen Livingstone and Jon Henley

German election: Social Democrats secure narrow win as CDU plunges to historic low – as it happened

That’s if from me, Helen Livingstone, for today, we are pausing the blog here. For a full rundown of the election results check out the report from our Berlin correspondent, Kate Connolly:

Updated

If you’d like to see Olaf Scholz in action, here is the SPD leader and current finance minister speaking to his party on election night, telling them that Germans have voted for the SPD because “they want the name of the next chancellor to be Olaf Scholz”:

Who is Christian Lindner?

Christian Lindner, who has led the business-friendly FDP since 2013, will be the second kingmaker in Germany’s coalition negotiations. The 42-year-old took on the party’s leadership in 2013, after a disastrous election result, which saw it exit the Bundestag.

He led its revival and return to parliament in 2017, but left coalition talks with Angela Merkel’s CDU, saying at the time, “It is better not to govern than to govern wrongly.”

Christian Lindner, FDP party leader, leaves following a TV broadcast on the parliamentary elections in Berlin.
Christian Lindner, FDP party leader, leaves following a TV broadcast on the parliamentary elections in Berlin. Photograph: Michael Probst/AP

This time around he has made it clear his preference would be for an alliance with the centre-right party. Such a coalition would have to include the Greens (and would colloquially be called a “Jamaica” coalition due to the parties’ colours).

But Lindner has appeared at times less keen on the alliance with the Greens. He told the Augsburger Allgemeine last week that the only two things the FDP and the Greens could agree on was “the legalisation of cannabis”.

The fiscal conservative, who, unlike the Greens, says the market should play a key role in combating climate change, has also made it clear he wants the prize of the finance ministry in return for his cooperation.

Updated

Who is Annalena Baerbock?

The Greens’ candidate for chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, who will now play the role of kingmaker in coalition negotiations, has led the party its best ever result in a national election – but the path has been a rocky one.

Promising a climate-friendly “new start”, her party briefly led the opinion polls after her nomination in April, appealing to younger voters with promises of a greener, more sustainable policy and economy.

But her campaign stumbled after Baerbock was accused of plagiarising passages from a recently published book from news articles and Wikipedia entries without crediting them, accusations she denied. That came after other scandals including her failure to register extra payments to parliament, as well as errors on her CV.

Once a competitive trampolinist, the 40-year-old is a graduate of the London School of Economics and has been a member of the German parliament since 2013. She became a co-leader of the Greens in 2018.

The co-leader of Germany’s Green party (Die Gruenen) and the party’s candidate for chancellor Annalena Baerbock and co-leader Robert Habeck speak at their electoral party
The co-leader of Germany’s Green party and the party’s candidate for chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, and co-leader Robert Habeck speak at their electoral party. Photograph: David Gannon/AFP/Getty Images

Updated

If you speak German, here’s an interesting analysis from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, which suggests that Germany wanted change – but also not really, noting that the election results throw up more questions than they answer.

“Germans longed for new horizons, but in the end they didn’t really trust themselves,” the authors write. They discuss Germans changing allegiances in the run-up to the poll, and make the point that never before has the strongest party in the Bundestag been simultaneously so weak.

Updated

Summary

It’s just past 6am in Germany, where people are waking up to the official preliminary results of Sunday’s federal election. If you’re just joining us, here’s a brief summary of what they were:

  • The centre-left SPD and their chancellor candidate, Olaf Scholz, have won 25.7% of the vote, giving them a slim lead over their centre-right CDU rivals.
  • Angela Merkel’s CDU party and its candidate, Armin Laschet, sank to a historic low in a federal election, with 24.1 %.
  • The Greens, led by Annalena Baerbock, have secured their best result in a national poll, with early results putting them at 14.8% – in third place and ahead of the liberal FDP, which posted 11.5%, also a small improvement.
  • The far-right AfD is set to enter parliament for the second time, on 10.3%.
  • The leftwing Die Linke party failed to clear the 5% hurdle to enter parliament, winning just 4.9%, but will be represented anyway due to a loophole that excepts them if they win three direct mandates.
  • The Bundestag will welcome its first transgender MPS, after Green candidates Tessa Ganserer and Nyke Slawik won seats.
  • The parties will now embark on “exploratory talks” to form a coalition government, with a three-way coalition considered the most likely at this point.
  • Likely constellations include a so-called green-yellow-red “traffic light” coalition, with the SPD, Greens and FDP, or a “Jamaican” coalition of the CDU/CSU, Greens and FDP.
  • Both Scholz and Laschet have insisted they will form the government, with Laschet pointing out that “it hasn’t always been the case that the party in first place provides the chancellor”. The Greens and the FDP will play kingmakers.
  • Merkel will remain chancellor while coalition talks proceed – that could be a lengthy process, with talks lasting three months in 2017.

Updated

The liberal FDP and the Greens are regarded as kingmakers in this election, with both of the three-way coalitions considered most likely to succeed the current government containing both parties.

German media is now turning its attention to how the two, which have little in common, should negotiate. “Scholz and Laschet have to approach them now: the kingmakers,” the Bild tabloid wrote.

FDP leader Christian Lindner was quick to note on Sunday evening that “perhaps the Greens and the FDP should talk to each other first”.

He has indicated his clear preference for a coalition with the CDU/CSU but the Greens, who posted their best ever result on Sunday, have been vague about their preferences, with chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock saying only that it was time for “a fresh start”.

Updated

Official preliminary results

The official preliminary results are in and the centre-left SPD has won Germany’s election by a slim margin, gaining 25.7% of the vote, according to the federal election agency, while Angela Merkel’s CDU has crashed to a historic low of 24.1%.

The Greens came in on third place with 14.8% of the vote, while the liberal FDP was on 11.5%. The far-right AfD was on 10.3%.

The CSU, the CDU’s Bavarian sister party, has experienced its worst result since the first Bundestag election in 1949, the Tagesspiegel newspaper is reporting, having won just 31.7 % according to preliminary results.

While CSU boss Markus Soeder said he was “not pleased” about it, he did find a silver-lining, noting that “it’s still significantly higher than the country-wide [CDU] result”.

Soeder bowed out of the race to become the CDU/CSU’s candidate to succeed Merkel as chancellor in April, despite beating Armin Laschet in popularity polls.

The latest results suggest that the leftwing Die Linke party will still be represented in the Bundestag despite failing the country’s 5% hurdle to enter parliament.

That’s down to a loophole in election law that means that if a party secures three seats via a “direct mandate” – Germans cast two votes, one for the person they want to represent their constituency, the direct mandate, and one for a party list – the hurdle no longer applies.

Currently veteran leftwinger Gregor Gysi and Gesine Lötzsch in Berlin as well as Sören Pellmann in Leipzig are believed to have retained their seats.

Updated

Germany will in fact have two transgender women in parliament for the first time, Spiegel reports, with Nyke Slawik projected to join her fellow Green Tessa Ganserer.

Writing on Twitter, Slawik said she could “hardly believe” her win, adding she hoped that “we will today open a new chapter of self-determination in politics and that we can end the years-long patronising of queer people.”

Updated

Time for a brief vocabulary lesson – and our new German word of the day.

On being told the SPD were ahead in the election results, US president Joe Biden reportedly said, “I’ll be darned ... They’re solid” – that is according to Reuters. German news magazine Spiegel has translated this into “Donnerwetter... Sie sind beständig”. The first part of this, the rather lovely “Donnerwetter”, translates back into English again as “thunderstorm” or literally “ thunder weather”.

Put it in your vocab books.

The two main rivals vying to succeed Angela Merkel as German chancellor have each said they will try to head the next government after early election results showed them neck-and-neck, kickstarting a scramble for potential coalition partners. So what happens next?

Germany’s chancellor is not directly elected but chosen through a vote in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, after a government has been formed. Merkel could remain in her post for weeks if not months while parties try to cobble together a coalition. AFP has put together this handy guide on how it all works:

Germany’s defence minister, the CDU’s Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, has lost her bid for a direct mandate in Saarland, the newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau is reporting. AKK, as she is widely known, won just 25.1 % of the vote, while her SPD rival, Josephine Ortleb garnered 36.9%. As top of the CDU’s party list in the state, of which she was once the premier, she could still enter the Bundestag.

AKK, who was once seen as Merkel’s successor, quit as leader of the CDU after a series of blunders that saw her lose standing within the party.

Germany has got its first federal transgender MP, after the Greens’ Tessa Ganserer won her race in Bavaria. Ganserer had already made history in 2018, when she became the first trans woman to serve in a state legislature.

In a referendum run parallel to the election, initial results show Berliners have voted resoundingly in favour of a plan to take thousands of housing units from large-scale landlords in a bid to preserve affordable housing in the city, where rents have shot up in recent years.

The vote is non-binding, Deutsche Welle reports, but it could force the city-state’s government to debate the proposal.

Summary

If you’re just joining us, here’s what you need to know so far:

  • The centre-left SPD and their chancellor candidate, Olaf Scholz, have a narrow lead with the latest projections showing them with 25.9% of the vote.
  • Angela Merkel’s centre-right CDU party and their candidate, Armin Laschet, have sunk to a historic low in a federal election, with a projected 24.1 %.
  • The Greens, led by Annalena Baerbock, have secured their best result in a national poll, with early results putting it at 14.6% – in third place and ahead of the liberal FDP.
  • The far-right AfD is set to enter parliament for the second time, on 10.5%.
  • Once results are in, the parties will embark on “exploratory talks” to form a coalition government, with a three-way coalition considered the most likely at this point.
  • Likely constellations include a so-called green-yellow-red “traffic light” coalition, with the SPD, Greens and FDP, or a “Jamaican” coalition of the CDU/CSU, Greens and FDP.
  • Both Scholz and Laschet have insisted they will form the government, with Laschet pointing out that, “It hasn’t always been the case that the party in first place provides the chancellor.” The Greens will likely play kingmaker.
  • Merkel will remain chancellor while coalition talks proceed - that could be a lengthy process, with talks lasting three months in 2017.

Updated

The far-right AfD has officially become the biggest party in Thüringen, in former East Germany, for the first time with 24% after all votes were counted. The SPD came in second on 23.4% and the CDU third on 16.9%:

This chart shows how older voters have stuck with the centre-left SPD (red) and centre-right CDU (black), while younger voters have tended to vote in greater numbers for the Greens and the more socially liberal, low-tax loving FDP (yellow). Interestingly it also shows those in their middle years are more likely to vote for the far-right AfD (blue) than the over 70s and the 18 to 24-year-olds.

Hello, this is Helen Livingstone taking over the blog from Jon Henley as Germany settles in for a long night of election results, with the SPD and their chancellor candidate, Olaf Scholz, holding a very narrow lead over Angela Merkel’s CDU and their candidate to replace her, Armin Laschet.

Updated

Angela Merkel's voting district won by SPD

In a sign of just how disastrous this election has been for the CDU/CSU, the voting district that has directly elected Angela Merkel in eight successive votes since 1990 has been won by the centre-left SPD:

Some interesting analysis is emerging, compiled by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen:

  • 56% of those who voted for the CDU/CSU have told German TV that Armin Laschet had a damaging effect on the party’s result, compared to 11% who said he had been a help, while 28% said his presence had made no difference.
  • For the SPD, 70% of voters said Scholz helped his party to its result, whilst only 5% said he was damaging to the party, and 21% that he made no difference.

The analysis also showed that the SPD made big gains especially among older voters: 17% of SDP voters were under 30 (down two points on the previous 2017 election), 19% were between 30 and 44 (up three points), 27% were aged 45-59 (up six points) and 35% were over 60 (up 11 points).

Agence-France Presse has a handy guide to what happens next:

First, all parties embark on what are known as “exploratory talks”. In this initial phase, which has no time limit, there is nothing to stop the parties from all holding coalition talks in parallel - though tradition dictates that the biggest party invites smaller ones for discussions.

However, Armin Laschet, the chancellor candidate from Merkel’s centre-right CDU-CSU bloc, has said the conservatives would “do everything we can” to lead the next government, even after preliminary results put them a touch behind the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD).

SPD candidate Olaf Scholz, the country’s finance minister, also said voters wanted a change and for “the next chancellor to be called Olaf Scholz”. The Greens have called a party congress for 2 October during which they could decide with whom they would take up exploratory talks.

The pro-business FDP party, which like the Greens could play a kingmaker role, has said it has a preference for a coalition with the conservatives and the Greens, but a three-way alliance with the SPD and Greens remains on the table too.

On Monday, the parties will hold leadership meetings. The newly elected MPs from each party will also hold their first meetings next week, with the SPD and CDU-CSU planning to convene on Tuesday. The newly elected parliament must hold its inaugural session no later than 30 days after the election, on October 26.

If two or three parties agree in principle that they would like to form an alliance, they must then begin formal coalition negotiations, with various working groups meeting to thrash out policy issues.

At the end of these negotiations, the parties decide who will be in charge of which ministry and sign a coalition contract. This phase also has no time limit, with the outgoing government - Angela Merkel’s adminsitration - holding the fort in the meantime.

The parties then nominate who they would like to be chancellor before the official vote in the Bundestag.

In an interview with the evening news programme, shortly after his first beer of the evening at the SPD party headquarters, Olaf Scholz said he was confident his party had won the election and that the citizens of Germany had “sent a signal” that they didn’t want the CDU to form the next government.

Asked by the presenter how he hoped to win over the pro-business FDP since the left of his party would be against the alliance, he said the SPD was a lively ‘Volkspartei’, which would practice a “pragmatic form of politics” with a focus on “more respect in our society, modernising the society and... climate protection”.

Asked how could modernise Germany in coalition with a party which ruled out tax increases, Scholz said his plans depended on private investment - from expanding wind power, reforming the steel and cement sectos to the car industry.

Could he exclude the idea of forming a grand coalition again with the CDU/CSU, the scenario that occured in 2017 after months of wrangling? Scholz said the only reason it came to this last time round was because the negotiations between the various parties “did not go well”.

He said that because German voters had sent the message that they didn’t want the CDU in government, he would not contemplate a grand coalition. He said he would lead negotiation talks “with respect” so negotiations would be successful.

Reuter’s has a round-up of reactions from party leaders and candidates for the job of chancellor - and a brutal analysis from the editor of Germany’s biggest-selling newspaper:

Olaf Scholz, SPD candidate:

Many voters put their cross by the SPD because they want the next Chancellor of Germany to be called Olaf Scholz ... We are ahead in all the surveys now. It is an encouraging message and a clear mandate to make sure that we get a good, pragmatic government for Germany.

Armin Laschet, CDU/CSU candidate:

This is a neck and neck race. We will do everything to form a conservative-led government, because Germany needs a future-oriented coalition that modernizes our country. This is not about getting an arithmetic majority but bringing together different political positions to make a coalition. I am ready for that.

Annalena Baerbock, Greens candidate:

We wanted more. We didn’t manage that, partly because of mistakes at the start of the campaign - mistakes I made. We were elected by very many young people in this country; among them we are the clear leading force. We need massive investment in our country. Our suggestion is to expand debt: break with an investment rule so that investment can take place.

Christian Lindner, FDP leader:

The election result is not easy to read. None of the former popular parties has more than 25-26% of the vote. So 75% of Germans didn’t vote for the party that will provide the next chancellor. Perhaps the Greens and the FDP should talk to each other first. The biggest policy overlap is between the conservative bloc and the FDP. For us, the ideas of tax hikes, of softening the debt brake are not acceptable.

Julian Reichelt, editor of Bild tabloid:

A historic catastrophe for the CDU.

SDP extends narrow lead

At 10pm local time, the centre-left SPD’s narrow lead over its centre-right CDU/CSU rival continues to grow, according to both sets of projections by public broadcasters ARD and ZDF.

Based on an amalgam of exit polls and partial counts of polling station and postal ballots, ARD/Infratest now put finance minister Olaf Scholz’s party on 25.8% of the vote and 205 seats in the 730-seat Bundestag, against 24.2% and 195 seats for Armin Laschet’s CDU/CSU.

The same provisonal results give potential coalition partners the Greens 114 seats and the liberal FDP 91 MPs.

Updated

According to a poll published just now by the broadcaster ZDF, a majority of Germans (55%) would prefer government led by the centre-left SPD, compared to 36% for one headed by the CDU/CSU alliance.

This is more or less the opposite of the result after the same question was asked after the previous 2017 election, when 52% were in favour of a CDU-led government and 36% per cent for an SPD-led one.

This would be a turn-up for the books: the Berliner Zeitung newspaper reports that there’s a chance the conservative CDU/CSU’s candidate - and Angela Merkel’s favoured successor - Armin Laschet, might not win a seat in parliament (see 16.15 entry below for an explanation of how the fiendishly complicated German electoral system works).

The historian Helene von Bismarck gives her verdict:

Updated

The gap between the SPD and CDU/CSU continues to widen as official results from polling stations come in and postal votes are tallied.

The lastest projections from the two public broadcasters ARD and ZDF at just after 9pm local time both put the centre-left party ahead, one by 1.2 percentage points (25.7% to 24.5%) and the other by 1.5 points (26% to 24.5%).

That would give the centre-left party 204 seats in the 730-seat Bundestag and CDU/CSU 197.

Updated

In a wide-ranging opinion piece, broadcaster Deutsche Welle’s editor-in-chief Manuela Kasper-Claridge says the days of caution and marginal compromise characterised by Germany’s previous grand coalition between the CU/CSU and SPD are over and German voters want change.

Major 21st-century challenges such as the climate crisis, the digital revolution and modernsing Germany can “only be solved in cooperation with the smaller parties - in all conceivable coalitions, the Greens and the FDP will have a big say. Nothing will work without them — and that’s a good thing,” she said.

The size of the Greens’ vote share shows “German voters are worried about climate change” and means the party will undoubtedly “go into the coalition talks with plenty of self-confidence, and demanding an expensive dowry”.

But Germans also care about how much major change will cost, Kasper-Claridge said - which is why the liberal FDP will also have to be involved. “They see themselves as the great deregulators, and could torpedo some of the Greens’ wishes,” she warned.

If that means coalition talks are going to be tough, and their outcome as yet uncertain, what is very clear is “the scale of the CDU/CSU’s defeat. You can’t sugarcoat such a dramatic fall, their worst result since 1949. After 16 years in government, the so-called ‘Union’ of CDU and CSU, is ripe for opposition.”

Updated

The leading candidates are now in what’s charmingly known as the “Elephant round” - a round-table, televised debate broadcast live on public networks ARD and ZDF.

The centre-left SPD’s Olaf Scholz Olaf Scholz said voters had given his party a “very clear mandate” to to lead the next government, adding that he thought there was “good overlap between the SPD and the Greens” but the need to incorprae a third party into the coalition would make things complicated.

Armin Laschet, Angela Merkel’s preferred successor as chancellor, said he would be aiming to build a coalition even if his centre-right CDU party finished second. “It hasn’t always been the case that the party in first place provides the chancellor,” he said.

Laschet said the country’s next chancellor in Germany would have to “bring together different factions” in parliament, adding that he felt a coalition between the CDU/CSU alliance, the Greens and the FDP would work better than one between the SPD and th same two parties.

The Greens’ leader, Annalena Baerbock, the party would play a full part in all exploratory talks. “We want to lead the country but we still have a clear mandate for the Green party to implement what we want to do in the next government,” she said.

Updated

With Olaf Scholz’s centre-left SPD and Armin Laschet’s CDU/CSU within a percentage poiint of each other in the race to be the Bundestag’s largest party, it is clear to all that forming a new coalition is going to be a fraught undertaking.

Christian Lindner, the leader of potential kingmakers the liberal, pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), has suggested a novel way of breaking the looming deadlock.

It is far from clear whether either of the two main parties would accept it, of course, but it’s an intriguing suggestion:

Here is Agence-France Presse’s latest take on the developing race:Germany’s centre-left Social Democrats took a razor-thin lead on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives in Sunday’s vote to decide her successor, preliminary results showed, sparking immediate claims from both sides to form the country’s next government.

Preliminary results showed Finance Minister Olaf Scholz’s SPD with around 24.9 to 25.6% of the vote, followed closely by Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats and their candidate Armin Laschet on 24.4 to 24.7%.

In what is one of the most unpredictable elections for Europe’s biggest economy in decades, the SPD swiftly staked its claim with general secretary Lars Klingbeil saying his party “clearly has the mandate to govern”.

“It’s going to be a long election night, that’s for sure,” Scholz said. “But this is certain: that many citizens have put their crosses next to the SPD because they want there to be a change in government and also because they want the next chancellor to be called Olaf Scholz.”

With the conservatives staring down the barrel of their worst result since the second world war, CDU secretary Paul Ziemiak admitted that the “losses are bitter compared to the last election” in 2017, when the CDU-CSU notched up 33%.

But Laschet, 60, warned that the jury was still out on which party triumphed, as he said that he would “do everything we can to build a government led by the (conservative) Union”.

If it matters, the Guardian will cover it. Our experienced journalists bring instant expertise and an authoritative voice to the big moments of the year. Our independence means we cover major events like this without worrying about offending shareholders or a billionaire owner. Our open model means we publish for everyone to read, not just those who can afford a subscription.
If this is an approach you value, then do consider supporting us today. It’s so quick and easy, you’ll be back here before Jon’s posted his next update. Danke schön!

SPD lead widening - race still too close to call

The gap between the Social Democrats and centre-right CDU/CSU alliance appears to be growing, although it remains wafer-thin.

This projection, if confirmed, would give the centre-left party 202 seats in parliament and its centre-right rival 197.

Updated

With the results projected to be this close, the process of building a coalition in the Bundestag or lower house of parliament could take weeks or even months - during which time Angela Merkel, who is stepping down after four terms in office, would remain at the helm in a caretaker capacity.

Should talks drag on for a little over three months, until just after mid-December, Merkel would become her country’s longest-serving leader, beating her party’s former leader Helmut Kohl, the architect of German reunification, who served as chancellor from 1 October 1982 until 27 October 1998.

Updated

The latest projections for the public broadcaster ARD, based on a combination of exit polls, the first official ballot counts from polling stations and a partial count of postal votes, show the Social Democrats on 25.2% of the vote.

That represents a wafer-thin lead over outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU, on 24.6%. Potential coalition partners the Greens are on 14.3%, the pro-business FDP on 11.6%, and the far-left Die Linke on 5%.

Translated into seats, that would make Olaf Scholz’s SPD the largest party in the Bundestag with 200 seats. Armin Laschet’s CDU/CSU would have 198, the Greens 113, FDP 92 and Die Linke 40.

Updated

The Greens’ candidate for chancellor, Annalena Baerbock, has praised the performance of her party - set to be a key player in coalition talks - as the “best result in our history” in a speech to supporters in Berlin.

The Greens, who were briefly ahead in the polls in May and June, are on course for 14.6% of the national vote, a significant improvement on their previous highest score of 10.7% in 2009, but well down on their polling levels earlier in the campaign.

“We ran for the first time to shape this country as a leading force,” Baerbock said. “We wanted more ... but the party made mistake. I made mistakes.” She said Germany “needs a government for the climate - that’s what we’re continuing to fight for now, with all of you.”

More from Social Democrat Olaf Scholz’s speech to the party faithful at Willy Brandt House in Berlin, and a subsequent interview with German public broadcaster ARD. Both main parties’ candidates for chancellor have now said they believe they have a mandate to form Germany’s next government:

So many voters ticked the box for the SPD because they want a change of government. I am confident that the citizens will also be happy afterward to have made the decision for the SPD ... The citizens want a change. They want the next chancellor to be the chancellor candidate of the SPD.

Updated

Social Democrats edging ahead?

The pollsters are adjusting their exit poll estimates as the evening advances and the first official results start to come in from polling stations around the country.

Very early days yet, of course, but the Social Democrats may take heart from the fact that they are now ahead - if only fractionally - in both projections:

Olaf Scholz is now addressing jubilant supporters at the SPD’s headquarters. The centre-left party’s vote share of about 25% -26% is low by historic standards but a great deal better that it looked like securing just a few months ago.

Turnout at polling station was about 78%, the federal election commission has said, two percentagepiints up on the previous 2017 vote and the highest since 2005 - the year Angela Merkel was first elected chancellor.

As the latest results show the centre-right CDU/CSU and centre-left SPD separated by a margin of just one seat, the Guardian’s Berlin bureau chief has this assessment of the SPD’s Olaf Scholz, one of the two rivals vying to succeed Angela Merkel:

Olaf Scholz, finance minister and deputy chancellor in Merkel’s last government, has been an influential player in German politics since 2002, when he became the centre-left Social Democratic Party’s general secretary under Gerhard Schröder.

A former labour lawyer and deputy leader of the SPD’s then anti-capitalist Young Socialist youth wing, the taciturn 63-year-old has for most of his career been associated with the party’s right: as senator for the interior and then mayor of Hamburg, he often pursued strict law and order policies and continued the mercantilist traditions of the rich port city in Germany’s north.

In the federal finance ministry, Scholz made sure not to shake German orthodoxies around balanced budgets. “I am liberal, but I am not stupid”, he once told an interviewer.

His supporters say the keen jogger is not only highly competent and a stickler for detail, but also more leftwing than his reputation. Along with his French counterpart Bruno Le Maire, he was one of the driving forces between the plan to introduced a global minimum corporate tax that was backed by the globe’s leading economies this summer.

Updated

One party that certainly will not be in government, the far-right, anti-immigrant AfD, projected to win 89 seats in a new parliament of 730 members, is drawing some comfort from the crushing losses suffered by the CDU/CSU.

Tino Chrupallo, the party’s co-chairman, tells supporters voters have punished Angela Merkel’s centre-right party after four terms in power:

Over at the HQ of a key potential coalition partner, the pro-business, liberal Free Democrats (FDP), meanwhile, party officials are playing their cards close to their chest.

“It can still be an exciting evening,” FDP general secrteary Volker Wissing said, refusing to speculate about possible coalitions. “It is the time to be happy about this outstanding vote,” he told the public broadcaster ARD.

Centre-right CDU/CSU leader Armin Laschet, Angela Merkel’s favoured successor as chancellor, is clearly disappointed with the exit polls, the Guardian’s Philip Oltermann reports from the party’s headquarters.

But the night will be long, he predicts, and the party that has dominated German politics since th second world war, never winning less than 30% of the vote in federal elections, is still in with a chance of forming a coalition with a majority in parliament.

The two exit polls we have so far would give the following distribution of seats in the Bundestag or lower house of parliament, according to media projections (showing only likely and possible coalition partners):

CDU/CSU: 200 seats / SPD 197 / Greens 119 / FDP 87 / Die Linke 39 (poll for ARD)

SPD 215 / CDU/CSU 198 / Greens 120 / FDP 89 / Die Linke 41 (poll for ZDF)

A large number of coalition options clearly remain open, bearing in mind that these are early exit polls and will inevitably change as the count progresses.

At the Social Democrats’s headquarters, general secretary Lars Klingbeil sounds confident the party’s candidate for chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is on course to succeed Angela Merkel after she steps down after a fourth term in office.

All bets are off on the composition of the next coalition, however, as the results, if they are confirmed, could allosw both the SPD and the Merkel’s conservatice CDU/CSU to try to cobble together a ruling majority since so little divide their scores.

Laschet in particular has signalled he could still try to form a coalition even if the CDU-CSU do not come first, most likely calling on the Greens and the liberal FDP for support.

An important reminder: these early exit polls, by pollsters for German public broadcasters, do not include postal ballots, which experts say could make up more than 40% of the total votes cast compared to about 29% in the previous 2017 elections.


If it matters, the Guardian will cover it. Our experienced journalists bring instant expertise and an authoritative voice to the big moments of the year. Our independence means we cover major events like this without worrying about offending shareholders or a billionaire owner. Our open model means we publish for everyone to read, not just those who can afford a subscription.
If this is an approach you value, then do consider supporting us today. It’s so quick and easy, you’ll be back here before Jon’s posted his next update. Danke schön!

Here is Reuter’s first take on the nailbiting early exit polls:

Germany’s CDU/CSU conservatives and their Social Democrat rivals were tied in Sunday’s national election, an exit poll showed, leaving open which of them will lead the next government as Angela Merkel prepares to stand down after 16 years in power.

The CDU/CSU bloc won 25% of the vote, their weakest result in a post-war federal election and on a par with the centre-left Social Democrat (SPD), the infratest poll for broadcaster ARD showed. Other exit polls showed the SPD marginally ahead.

“That hurts,” CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak told ARD. Attention will now shift to informal discussions - likely with the Greens, on 15%, and liberal Free Democrats (FDP), on 11% - followed by more formal coalition negotiations, which could take months, leaving Merkel in charge in a caretaker role.

Deutsche Welle’s chief political correspondent, Michaela Kuefner, captures the moment the first exit poll came through to CDU headquarters in Berlin showing the centre-right party neck-and-neck with the Social Democrats:

Second exit poll puts Social Democrats marginally ahead

Just to confuse matters - and ratchet up the tension- further, a second exit poll for the broadcaster ZDF put the centre-left SPD on 26%, two points clear of Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU on 24%.

That poll has the Greens on 14.5% and the FDP on 12%.

It’s going to be a long night ...

Updated

Social Democrats and Merkel’s CDU tied in race to succeed outgoing chancellor, exit poll says

An early exit poll for the public proadcaster ARD suggests the centre-left SPD and centre-right CDU/CSU are neck-and-neck in the race to be the largest party in the Bundestag, with both predicted to win 25% of the vote.

Of potential coalition partners, the Greens are on course for 15% and the liberal, pro-business FDP party for 11%.

Updated

Minutes before the first exit polls, chaotic scenes have been reported in the German capital where voters are casting their ballot not just for the federal elections but also a new parliament in Berlin - as well as in a historic referendum on whether authorities should be allowed to seize and take into public ownership more than 200,000 homes.

Some polling stations had to shut their doors after they ran out of voting papers. Some subsequently received the wrong type of ballot paper which failed to include the option to vote for the Berlin parliament in their district.

Voting stations 44, 407 and 408 were involved in the embarrassing mix up, according to the daily Tagesspiegel. Some voting papers had to be declared invalid as a result.

Voters reported having to wait outside polling stations for up to an hour before they could cast their ballots. Some officials put the chaos down to the Berlin Marathon which has been taking place today, blocking many streets and leading to traffic jams.

Geert Baasen, spokesman for the state election administration in Berlin said those queuing should not be concerned that they will miss out. Polling stations are due to close at 6pm local time but anyone in the queue before 6pm will still be allowed to vote.

Despite the expected record number of postal votes, long waits are being reported at many polling stations, with some voters in Berlin waiitng for up to two hours to cast their ballots in person.

Some polling stations in the German capital have reported running out of ballot papers, while deliveries of fresh supplies are being delayed by road closures and crowds attending today’s Berlin marathon.

Election volunteers are handing out chocolates to keep some waiting voters happy ...

How does Germany’s electoral system work? Combining directly elected MPs with proportional representation, it is not the world’s simplest.

When voters enter the polling booth, they make two crosses on the ballot paper - one for a direct representative in their local district, the other for their preferred political party.

The first is meant to ensure that each of the coutry’s 299 districts is represented in parliemant, while the second determines the total proportion of seats each party will eventually have.

Ahead of election day, the parties write up “candidate lists” in each of Germany’s 16 states. The names at the top have the biggest chance of getting a seat, and the party with the most votes then gets to send the most MPs to parliament.

If, for example, a party wins three direct seats through the first vote, but is eligible for 10 seats overall through the second vote, seven more names on the party’s list are also given seats. If a party earns more direct seats than it is entitled to through its share of the party vote, it gets them anwyay - so-called “overhang” seats.

This means the Bundestag can expand far beyond its minimum size of 598 seats. A record 709 MPs were returned to parliament in 2017, a figure that could well be exceeded this year as a large number of voters are expected to “split” their votes.

In a bid to avoid excessive fragmentation and stop potentially extremist parties entering parliament, parties which score below 5% of the second vote are exclude. The far-left Die Linke party is flirting with the 5% bar in the polls and whether or not it clear it could be a key factor in post-election coalition arithmetic.

Voters, finally, do not elect the chancellor. That job is down to parliament, which chooses the future head of government by absolute majority - half of all the lower house seats plus one.

Polling station turnout dips, postal votes soar

Voter turnout on the day is slightly down on the previous 2017 vote, the Federal election commissioner has said, with 36.5% of eligible voters casting their ballots nationwide by 2pm local time, compared to 41.1% five years ago - when the final turnout was 72%.

However, the 36.5% figure does not include postal votes, which are predicted to reach 40% or even 50% of the total, smashing all previous records. In 2017, nearly 29% of voters mailed their ballot paper in before polling day.

“As expected, the currently determined voter turnout is lower than the 2017 figure, as we assume a significantly higher proportion of absentee voters whose turnout will be determined at a later date,” the election commissioner, Georg Thiel, said.

Observers say postal votes could pay a significant part in the final result since many will have been cast before Armin Laschet began closing in on his centre-left rival, Olaf Scholz, in recent days, potentially negating the centre-right candidate’s late surge.

Updated

Affable but gaffe-prone, CDU leader Armin Laschet - Angela Merkel’s preferred successor as chancellor - blundered again on election day, folding his ballot the wrong way and so revealing to the assembled media which party he had voted for.

His choice was hardly a surprise - Laschet cast both votes for his centre-right party under an election system that allows voters to cast one vote for a representative in the country’s 299 districts, and one for the party they want in parliament.

But under German voting rules voters must keep their choice confidential until they have left the polling station. The website of Germany’s federal election commissioner is crystal clear: voters must fold their ballot paper “in such a way that their vote is not recognisable.”

The mistake sparked calls for Laschet’s vote to be disqualified, as well as ridicule in national newspapers and on social media. The RND group of newspapers wrote on its website that “every schoolchild in Germany knows that voting should be universal, free, direct, equal - and confidential”.

In response to qustions, the election commissioner said Laschet’s vote would not be disqualified because he had voted for his own party, as expected. The rule rule serves to “ensure that other voters are not influenced”, the commissioner said on Twitter.

In this instance, it saw no voter influence, since “a nationally known politician (...) voted for his own party as expected. This does not constitute influencing of the vote,” it added.

The CDU leader’s hopes of succeeding Merkel have revived somewhat in recent days, but he has consistently polled lower than his centre-left SPD rival Olaf Scholz amid a series of gaffes, including being filmed laughing during a visit in July to a town devastated by Germany’s deadliest flooding in more than half a century.

Updated

Herzlich willkommen

Hello and welcome to the Guardian’s live coverage of Germany’s 2021 federal election, which - whatever its outcome - marks the end of an era: Angela Merkel’s 16 years as chancellor of Europe’s largest economy.

The race is widely seen as one of the most unpredictable in recent history, with about 40% of voters saying they are still undecided and polls narrowing over the past few day to bring Merkel’s conservative CDU/CSU alliance almost level with the centre-left SPD.

The latest polling showed the CDU/CSU, led by 60-year-old Armin Laschet, CDU leader and premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, on 23% of the vote, with the SPD, headed by outgoing social democrat finance minister Olaf Scholz, 60, on 25% - a wafer-thin lead that is well within the pollsters’ margin of error.

The election is expected to yield a splintered parliament, forcing the winner to sound out potential partners before trying to form a three-way coalition with a majority in parliament in a process that could take several months, during which Merkel will stay in office in a caretaker capacity.

Most observers predict the most likely scenarios would see either the SPD or the CDU/CSU - whichever finishes first this evening - forming an alliance with the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP). A coalition between the SPD, Greens and the far-left Die Linke is seen as a possible alternative.

Polling opened at Germany’s 88,000 voting stations at 8am and will close at 6pm, with the first exit polls due to be published at the same time.

Together with the Guardian’s Berlin correspondents Philip Oltermann and Kate Connolly, I’ll be bringing you all the latest news, analysis, results and colour from an election whose outcome will set the future course for western Europe’s most populous country - and whose impact will be felt far beyond its borders.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Tori Spelling recalls her childhood friendship with Paris Hilton
Describing a long-standing bond between their families that began when they were young, Tori Spelling has recalled her childhood friendship with Paris Hilton.
BANG Premier
BANG Premier
Is dark chocolate healthier than milk chocolate? 2 dietitians explain
Easter chocolate is all over supermarket shelves. Some people reach straight for milk chocolate eggs while others pause at the darker varieties, assuming they’re healthier.
The Conversation
The Conversation
Astronauts may struggle to reproduce in outer space, study suggests — what does that mean for the future of space colonization?
A new study found that microgravity simulated on Earth hindered sperm cell movement, egg fertilization and embryo development ‪—‬ findings that have serious implications for the future of space colonization.
LiveScience
LiveScience
Keith Urban Allegedly Claims Nicole Kidman 'Villain Narrative' Is 'Very Unfair,' Vows Revenge
Keith Urban is reportedly furious over a perceived 'villain narrative' around his split from Nicole Kidman, after she omitted him from a recent interview and left him feeling erased.
International Business Times UK
International Business Times UK
Former WWE Superstar Braun Strowman Takes Down 7,300 Calories A Day, But It's His Grocery Bill That Has Me Sweating
And it's not just the meat sweats...
Cinemablend
Cinemablend
Black Comedian Faces Backlash After Donning “White Face” To Mock Erika Kirk
The skit features Druski with his face painted white, wearing a blonde wig, heavy makeup, and bright blue contact lenses.
Bored Panda
Bored Panda
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.
Download on the AppStore Get it on Google Play