German Voters Have Spoken: What Did They Say?

On September 26, more than 60 million Germans voted to choose their next government. After 16 years in office, Angela Merkel was not on the ballot to lead her center-right alliance of the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union (collectively, the CDU/CSU), and most indications were that her “grand coalition” government of the CDU/CSU and center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) would not continue. The SPD tried to offer both change and continuity by passing over more progressive party leaders to choose Federal Finance Minister Olaf Scholz, known as a pragmatic centrist, as their candidate. Meanwhile, the CDU/CSU chose Armin Laschet, the governor of Germany’s most populous state, North Rhein-Westphalia. Although it can be a challenge for the leader of a party which has held the Chancellery since 2005 to claim to represent change, the fact that Laschet was not a member of the national government but rather a state governor gave him (at least theoretically) some credibility on that score. Merkel’s retirement presaged major changes in German politics, but German voters could not quite decide how much change they wanted. So, What Happened? Now that the official results have been tabulated, the CDU/CSU has emerged as the biggest loser of the night, ending up just above 24%, around eight percentage points lower than their already disappointing 2017 showing. This is the worst result for the Christian Democrats in the history of the Federal Republic, going all the way back to 1949. Armin Laschet’s lackluster campaign certainly deserves much of the blame, especially since he was chosen specifically because CDU members believed he was electable. Laschet declared on election night that the CDU/CSU still has a chance to form a government, but it is far from certain that he would lead it even if that were true. The CDU has traditionally been ruthless in punishing those who lose elections. Although Laschet deserves the brunt of the criticism, Angela Merkel cannot emerge from this debacle unscathed. In her nearly 20 years as CDU Chair and 16 years as Chancellor, Merkel had the power to shape the party, leaving critics isolated when not driving them out of active politics altogether. For all her popularity and success, she—like previous long-serving Christian Democratic Chancellors Konrad Adenauer and Helmut Kohl—was neither willing nor able to cultivate a strong successor, a failure that must be included in any future discussions of her legacy. Conservative critics also claim that her relentless centrism cost the CDU/CSU votes on the right. As we will see, that is debatable. More notable is that more than a million voters abandoned the CDU/CSU for the SPD, reflecting both Merkel’s appeal to the broad center and Laschet’s failure to hold onto those “Merkel voters.” The SPD, which finished in first place, around two percentage points ahead of the CDU/CSU, was a clear winner. Drawing those million-plus votes away from their Christian Democratic rivals demonstrated the wisdom of selecting Olaf Scholz to appeal to the broad middle. Even if 26 percent is far from a resounding mandate, by adding five percentage points to their 2017 result, the SPD also put to rest (at least for the moment) the predictions that their days as the leading center-left party in Germany were over. Being the junior partner in Merkel’s coalition had not helped the SPD. Much as conservatives in the CDU/CSU lamented Merkel’s lack of ideological clarity, SPD progressives complained that Merkel stole voters and ideas away from them. Being in government also made it difficult to draw sharp contrasts with their coalition frenemies. Scholz’s strong performance has given the party a chance to reclaim a leadership role in national politics. Scholz’s unspectacular but stumble-free campaign may have confirmed the wisdom of selecting a leader with broad appeal, though it remains to be seen how he will build a government that will satisfy the desires of more progressive colleagues for a more definite shift to the left. Those challenges will be that much more difficult because any future government will have to include the other two big winners of the election: the Greens and the Free Democratic Party (FDP). Each scored well into the double digits by appealing to younger voters and to those dissatisfied with the dominant parties, while also reaffirming their place within a broad democratic consensus. Although neither on their own grew big enough to challenge for the Chancellorship, each is now poised to play major roles going forward. The Greens had high hopes entering the campaign. Their combination of earnest idealism and environmental seriousness earned them one of the best finishes in their history. Winning nearly fifteen percent of the overall vote means there will be more than 100 deputies from the Greens in the coming Bundestag, reflecting their development from radical fringe to the center. Already serving in many state and local governments, and in a national government with the SPD between 1998 and 2005, the Greens have abandoned much of their previous opposition to Germany’s roles in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the European Union, emerging as fierce critics of Russia and China as well as advocates for transatlantic cooperation—all positions that have made them more palatable to centrist voters and which can allow them to serve in coalitions with either Christian or Social Democrats. The FDP also comes out as a winner in this election with over 11 percent of the vote. After being ejected from parliament altogether in 2013, the party made a return to the national stage in 2017 under the leadership of Christian Lindner, who played up the FDP’s image as the representative of young urban professionals. Calling for overall modernization of society and advocating tax and spending cuts, Lindner may be more comfortable in a coalition with the CDU/CSU but has positioned his party equally well as partner for either camp. Indeed, a coalition with the SPD and Greens would allow him to polish the FDP’s image as the defender of market-friendly policies. The overall result of the election is therefore a more fluid and fragmented political environment but one where the center has largely held. Once dominated by the two broad “people’s parties” of CDU/CSU and SPD, the center now includes more self-confident Greens and FDP. Together, these four parties won more than three-quarters of the overall vote. Coalition negotiations may be long and complex, but the many possible forms of competition and cooperation between these parties offers the chance to revitalize German democracy that some feared had stagnated under successive grand coalitions by encouraging creative coalition building among largely equal partners. What Didn’t Happen? Such possibilities for German democracy exist because of something that did not happen. Despite many predictions (confident or worried), the relative weakness of the top two traditional parties did not lead to a triumph for the extremes.