German far-right makes unprecedented gains as center-right wins election

With votes still being counted, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AFD) is projected to take second in the German elections held Sunday.

The Christian-Democratic center-right party (CDU/CSU), led by Friedrich Merz, will return to be the ruling party with 220 mandates, for the first time since Angela Merkel's resignation in 2021. Merz is a conservative 69-year-old who comes from a family of lawyers. The far-right AfD party, the controversial faction led by Alice Weidel, is expected to overtake the ruling party of the current Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

Over 59 million Germans eligible to vote went out today to vote, after the elections were moved forward by half a year following the resignation of Scholz. According to the latest poll published, Schultz's lack of popularity is expected to bring his party, SPD, to a low of 115 mandates. The Green Party, a coalition partner of the SPD, is expected to drop from a record high of 15 percent in 2021 to 13 percent on Sunday. The polls closed at 6:00 pm local time.

US President Donald Trump hailed the return of the conservatives in Germany, writing on his Truth social media platforms that it was "a great day for Germany."

In the Bundestag, the lower house of the German parliament, there are 630 seats, with voters not directly electing a chancellor. Instead, they determine the composition of the Bundestag similar to Israel, but vote for a geographic representative as well as a party list. The parliament elects a chancellor after signing a coalition agreement. German governments are almost always built in coalitions, since no party tends to succeed in reaching 50 percent of the votes required to rule alone.

Elections were supposed to take place in September, but Scholz fired his finance minister on November 9, 2024, after months of disputes over the revival of the German economy. This led to the collapse of the coalition in a vote of no confidence.

Merz, who led in the polls, caused shock in the country at the end of January when he tried to advance legislation that would impose stricter control on immigration through the Bundestag. His willingness to rely on the support of the AfD party for this purpose broke a long-standing taboo in German politics. Nevertheless, in an interview with CNN this month, he decried the far-right party for its revisionism of Nazi history in the country.

The AfD was established in 2013, first entering parliament in 2017, advocating for the securing of Germany's borders and the expulsion of immigrants who arrived illegally and committed crimes. It supports the mass deportation of immigrants. The party recorded impressive achievements in the local elections of 2024, becoming the largest party in Thuringia, being the first far-right party to succeed in winning a German state since the Nazi era, and took second place in another regional vote. Despite her good status in polls, most other parties said they would not sit with Weidel in a coalition, making it difficult to form a coalition at all. However, the extremist party, some of whose members were convicted of using Nazi slogans, receives large support from the White House. Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance called on German citizens to vote for it. Elon Musk even deliberately attended the party conference.

In third place in the polls is the party of the current Chancellor Olaf Scholz, the SPD, which is a center-left party and the oldest political party in Germany. In the current polls, received only 16 percent of the votes, after being the largest party in the 2021 elections.

In fourth place is the Green Party, which had 13 percent in polls. The party leader, Robert Habeck, is currently the finance minister. Although the party will not be the largest, it will play an important role in forming the coalition.