Martin Suchanek
Friedrich Merz will probably become the next Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. However, we already knew this before the elections, as the overall result was hardly surprising – apart from the highest voter turnout since 1987 and the success of the Left Party.
What does the result mean?
| Party | CDU/CSU | AfD | SPD | Greens | THE LEFT | BSW | FDP |
| Result in per cent | 28,52 | 20,80 | 16,41 | 11,61 | 8,77 | 4,97 | 4,33 |
| Change compared to 2021 | + 4,32 | + 10,40 | – 9,29 | – 3,09 | + 3,87 | + 4,97 | – 7,07 |
| Second votes (in millions) | 11,194 | 10,327 | 8,148 | 5,761 | 4,355 | 2,468 | 2,148 |
| Seats in the Bundestag | 208 | 152 | 120 | 85 | 64 | 0 | 0 |
Table: Preliminary official result (1)
The political shift to the right in recent years, which is expressed above all in a massive increase in racism, not only characterised the election campaign, but was also reflected in the results, particularly in the growth of the AfD. The party doubled its result and received over 10 million votes. It became the strongest party in all eastern German states (except Berlin). It is particularly dramatic that it was not only able to win over small business owners and the petty bourgeoisie, but also performed well above average among people in a poor economic situation (39%) and among workers (38%) and the unemployed (34%). It also became the second strongest party among young voters (18 to 24-year-olds).
These results are alarming. Even if the AfD is not a fascist party, but a racist, right-wing populist force, the vast majority of its approximately 10 million votes do not represent „stray“ protest voters, but a consolidated voter base that votes for the AfD not despite, but because of its racism, which it sells as a reactionary answer to the social question, similar to the FPÖ in Austria.
The CDU/CSU won the elections and will provide the next chancellor in Friedrich Merz. Its success, however, is limited. It remained well below the 30% mark with its second worst election result since the Federal Republic of Germany was founded. In addition, it effectively has no alternative to the SPD when it comes to forming a coalition.
The CDU/CSU parties were not elected because of Merz and their programme, but primarily because of their opposition to the previous „traffic light“ coalition Although this meant that they gained a massive number of voters from the SPD and FDP, at the same time, they lost hundreds of thousands to the AfD.
The SPD suffered a historic defeat. It recorded its worst result since 1945 and suffered above-average losses in its strongholds – mainly to the CDU/CSU, but also hundreds of thousands to the AfD, Die Linke and BSW. Among blue-collar workers (12%), white-collar workers (15%) and the unemployed (13%), the Social Democrats performed dramatically poorly; only among pensioners, i.e. mainly retired workers, did they manage to hold up reasonably well with 24%.
Olaf Scholz and Co. were rightly punished for the traffic light government’s social cuts, cutbacks and the war policy. But a change of course is not to be expected. Unlike the last „grand coalition“, there is no opposition within the party to a coalition with the conservatives, especially as the leaders of the industrial trade unions are pushing for one in order to „prevent worse things from happening“.
Although, like all parties in the traffic light coalition, the Greens did lose votes, they lost significantly less than the SPD and FDP. This is because they have a social base among the wage-dependent middle classes and the labour aristocracy and also represent a „liberal“ minority faction of capital that shares their mixture of aggressive war policies, social issues, Green New Deal and pseudo-democratic humanism. However, they lost 700,000 voters to Die Linke, which is mainly due to a movement of young voters away from the Greens to the Left Party.
One positive result of these elections is undoubtedly that the FDP will not be represented in the next Bundestag and we will be spared Lindner and Co. for the next few years. After being in government for over three years, the FDP not only blocked or watered down even the few, limited social measures, and brought down the traffic light coalition, but then ran an election campaign as if it had always been in opposition. However, this no longer helped to give it any „credibility“, and the small minority faction of German capital and the educated middle classes, which had always supported the FDP, simply proved too small to overcome the 5% hurdle.
Sahra Wagenknecht’s right-wing populist party, the BSW, missed out on entering the Bundestag by just a few thousand votes. This raises the question of survival for the party, whose MPs voted in favour of even more racism together with the CDU/CSU, FDP and AfD. As a purely electoral association, the BSW only has 1,200 members (at the beginning of January 2025) and has no mobilising capacity. The media hype following the split in the Left Party is long gone, meaning that the BSW will struggle to survive. And that would be a good thing, because nobody needs a party that is somewhere between the SPD, CDU/CSU and AfD.
The success of the Left Party
In contrast to the general right-wing trend, Die Linke was successful in the federal elections. In mid-2024, it still seemed unlikely that it would even be represented in the next parliament after catastrophic defeats in the European and several state elections. However, a trend reversal was already visible at the end of 2024/beginning of 2025, even though no one would have expected 8.77% in the elections at the time.
The Left did particularly well among first-time voters. Among 18 to 24-year-olds, the party became the strongest force with 24% (+17% compared to 2021), followed by the AfD with 21%, which reflects a strong left-right polarisation among young people. Young women in particular voted in favour of the Left Party with 37%, while the AfD dominated among young men.
Even though Die Linke lost 350,000 votes to the BSW, it was able to make massive gains from the Greens, the SPD and non-voters. It also performed significantly better among wage earners and the unemployed than in the 2024 elections and was able to regain lost ground slightly, which reflects a growing anchoring in the trade unions in the healthcare sector and in the public sector.
In addition, a trend from recent years also continued in these elections. Although the Left Party performed better in the East (including Berlin) with 11.8 %, it also gained 7.6 % in the West. It was particularly strong in Berlin, where it became the strongest party in the first and second votes with around 22% and 20% respectively and achieved the best result in its history. It won four constituencies in Berlin alone, including Neukölln, for the first time a purely West Berlin district, where Ferat Kocak won with 30%. In total, Die Linke won six direct mandates.
The success of the Left Party can be attributed to several factors. Firstly, it has gained a massive number of new members since the split with Wagenknecht, with around 30,000 new members joining since 2023. It now has around 90,000 members. This has been accompanied by a rejuvenation of the membership. The election campaign was conducted much more actively than in previous years and Die Linke was able to distinguish itself as a „social force“ in the Bundestag debate and in mobilisations against the AfD as the only parliamentary opposition to the racism of all other parties that is visible to the masses.
Millions voted for Die Linke because it is perceived as the only opposition to neoliberal attacks, cuts, militarisation and racism. This also makes the left-wing reformist programme of the Left Party, which presents the welfare state, social redistribution, disarmament and pacifism as the solution to all problems, attractive because it corresponds to the prevailing reformist consciousness of these voters.
In addition, Die Linke is in no immediate danger of assuming significant government responsibility and can therefore promise reformist miracles more easily. Sooner or later, the question of co-administration will hit the party hard again, especially at state level, if it continues to achieve electoral success. Secondly, it does play an active role in social movements and tries to present itself as an „activist“ party.
Conversely, however, it has no strategy for pushing through even its reform proposals against the resistance of the ruling class (except through „rebellious“ co-governance). Although its influence in the trade unions has increased, it stubbornly refuses to fight the social democratic-led bureaucracy politically or even to put pressure on it. Instead, it hopes to take over the apparatus itself in individual organisations.
Secondly, Die Linke is focussing one-sidedly on the so-called „social issue“, on social reforms. Of course, the fight against usurious rents, against price increases and for social security is very important. But at the same time, Die Linke is trying to avoid other key issues. Although it presents itself as anti-racist and anti-fascist, it does not see the fight against racism and fascism, for equal rights for all migrants and refugees, as an integral part of the class struggle. In this area, it therefore pursues a policy of cross-class, popular front-like alliances (right up to the imaginary „left“ wing of the CDU) and rejects the fight for open borders, full citizens‘ rights and the establishment of self-defence structures against racist and fascist attacks. Where it still co-governs, such as in Bremen and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, it continues to tacitly accept deportations and otherwise shrouds this reactionary policy in silence.
Above all, however, Die Linke, which currently also has „socialism“ and „class politics“ on its banners, is shirking international issues. It is at a loss for words on the reactionary Trump-Putin deal on Ukraine and rejects it, but its alternative to this pacification lies in the utopian invocation of UN peacekeeping forces to secure peace and a vaguely defined „European security structure“. In principle, it does not question the Bundeswehr and Germany’s „defence capability“.
The party remains internally divided on Palestine. For months, it refused to call the genocide a genocide. The pro-Zionist, anti-German wing of the party even wanted to overtake the government on the right and some of these figures finally left the party in 2024. At the same time, the party leadership also expelled the well-known anti-Zionist Ramsis Kilani for behaviour detrimental to the party. This actually demonstrates the political inability to react appropriately to the coming internal and external attacks.
All of this shows that the Left Party’s success is politically based on solid, reformist foundations. However, it also proves that it was politically correct to critically support DIE LINKE in the federal elections. Tens of thousands of new members and over four million voters represent a potential force to resist the attacks of German capital and the next government. Only if we succeed in getting them moving in the workplaces, in the trade unions and on the streets will it be possible to mobilise broader layers of the class, bring about a change of course in the trade unions and mobilise dissatisfied members and voters of the Social Democrats, the Greens or even non-voters and bring them into active opposition to their parties.
The fact that the leadership of the Left Party has no plan for such a struggle should not be an obstacle to the active intervention of revolutionaries vis-à-vis the party’s members and voters. On the contrary, it opens up a field for the common struggle against the next government and for subjecting reformism to the practical test and revolutionary criticism.
The programme of the next government
The result once again clearly shows the increasing erosion of the „bourgeois centre“. The CDU/CSU and SPD can and will probably form the government. However, this „Grand Coalition“ only has a narrow parliamentary majority – and only because the BSW and FDP did not make it into parliament. Of course, the coalition negotiations between the Conservatives and Social Democrats could be more protracted than either of them are hoping for, but the fact that both business organisations and trade unions are pushing for this government of „state-supporting“ parties makes it quite likely that a government will be formed quickly.
The programme of such a government will be quite something. Even if it is not directly that of the CDU/CSU, we can expect a programme of general political and economic attack with a social partnership veneer that will be comparable to Agenda 2010 under Schröder.
The outlines are clearly recognisable.
1. massive attacks on jobs, working conditions and incomes to „save the competitiveness“ of German capital
Across large-scale industry, redundancies, rationalisation and flexibilisation of working conditions are on the agenda. This will undoubtedly be an area of conflict between the SPD and the CDU-CSU parties, but as the VW deal has shown, the trade union leaders are prepared to make extreme concessions in order to „cushion“ rationalisation measures in the interests of big business and ensure industrial peace if they continue to be incorporated as negotiating partners of capital.
This also includes massive attacks on citizens‘ income, minimum wage, pensions and the entire social sector, which are being pushed by the CDU/CSU. There will certainly be conflicts with the SPD and trade unions over these, and conversely it is to be feared that the CDU/CSU will be accommodated in return for a few cosmetic corrections.
2. The programme for the restructuring of German capital
This policy is to be flanked by „subsidies“ for capital during restructuring, such as investment incentives, the reduction of „bureaucratic“ requirements such as building regulations, safety or the environment – in short, billions in subsidies that are borne by wage earners in the form of debt or taxes. The trade union leaders have long been in agreement with the employers‘ associations in this respect, according to the motto: if German export capital is doing well, the trade unions and employees will also get a slice of the cake of extra profits. This social-chauvinist strategy has always been reactionary, nationalistic and divisive. In the current situation, it is turning out to be not only that, but also a contributor to losses on a historic scale.
3. Massive rearmament and militarisation
All parties in the Bundestag (except Die Linke) are in favour of a massive rearmament programme. It is to be expected that the next German government wants to increase the defence budget to 3% of GDP in the short term. Hundreds of billions are to flow into German and European armaments programmes to defend „freedom and democracy“ against Russia and, more recently, the USA.
The national debt, which was otherwise always considered the greatest of all evils, no longer plays a role. Regardless of how the war over Ukraine is settled, the CDU/CSU, SPD and also the Greens assume that the global situation has fundamentally changed, that the USA is no longer a reliable ally but a global competitor that is attacking „our democracy“ and „our values“. This naturally makes it easier to present a massive arms build-up as „self-defence“ in times of need and the imperialist ambitions of the European powers and the EU, which have fallen behind, as a „vigilant defence of democracy“. In addition to hundreds of billions for German and European defence projects, this also includes the discussion about the re-introduction of compulsory military service or compulsory service for all – the AfD is calling for compulsory military service for 2 years! – in other words, internal militarisation.
4. Racism, deportations and „regulated migration“
Even if the SPD accused the CDU/CSU parties of breaking the firewall against the AfD before the elections, there is fundamental agreement between the parties regarding the tightening of German and European migration and security policy. We must therefore expect a massive increase in deportations, the sealing off of EU borders, but also within the EU, further moves towards the racist oppression of migrants in Germany (including demands to withdraw existing citizenship) and the criminalisation of political activity.
In addition, incitement and violence against refugees and migrants have already increased massively in 2024 and threaten to continue. The resolute fight against all forms of racism, against all deportations, for open borders and full citizenship rights for all is not only an imperative of solidarity, it is also a prerequisite for overcoming the deep racist divide in the working class.
5. Reorganisation of German and European imperialism
The above points are inextricably linked to the most difficult endeavour for the next government, for German capital and its imperialist orientation. The first four points put a strong focus on the offensive of the ruling class at home and aim at breaking the resistance of the working class, to make Germany great again, with interconnected levels of a general attack on society as a whole. But that is not enough for German imperialism. The crisis of the EU, its political backsliding behind China, the US and Russia, is being qualitatively exacerbated by Trumpism. And neither the EU nor the German bourgeoisie have a clear, let alone joint, strategic answer as to how they can and will counter this. Rather, the most important powers in the EU – Germany and France – are themselves in a deep crisis. Even if the German government agrees on a new attempt at stronger economic, political and military unification of the EU, which is quite likely, firstly there is still uncertainty about how and where, and secondly the centre of the imperialist EU itself is in crisis.
Italy’s Meloni government is pursuing a more US-friendly course, albeit with limits. France’s Macron likes to present himself as the „strategic mastermind“ of an independent Europe. But he is acting like an emperor without a country, losing influence and control over the spheres of influence in Africa and at the same time unable to form a stable government in his own country.
At present, all major factions of German big business continue to rely on the EU, knowing full well that Germany would be far weaker without it and urgently needs to maintain its economic spheres of influence, particularly in Eastern Europe. But at a certain point, the crisis in the EU could lead to parts of German capital starting to focus on a different global strategy – and then the hour could strike for a coalition between the CDU/CSU and the AfD, which would brand the euro and the EU as a means of „plundering“ Germany.
Conclusion
German imperialism is in a strategic crisis. Even if German companies like to portray their situation as particularly threatening, the intensification of global competition, over-accumulation of capital and falling profit rates are a reality. Falling behind the Chinese and US competition is just as real.
Under the Merz government, we must therefore assume a general attack on the existing rights of the working class. Competitiveness can be at least partially improved by attacking the incomes of wage earners and their working conditions, thus massively increasing the overall rate of exploitation. Racism, militarism and attacks on democratic rights (e.g. Palestine solidarity) are closely linked to this.
At the same time, we can assume that such a general attack and the ongoing economic attacks will also lead to resistance due to stagnation. However, this has so far remained sporadic, symbolic or at best sectoral. It is also unclear whether and how a core of conflict will form that can lead to a generalisation of the struggle – whether in sectors such as hospitals, where new trade union vanguards have formed, or in areas of large-scale industry where mass redundancies are imminent. Or against the shift to the right and racism, against the deportation of our refugee or migrant colleagues if they do not submit to the German raison d’état or are to be deported to supposedly safe countries such as Syria or Afghanistan.
In this situation, the task of revolutionaries and all class-struggle sections of the working class is to show how resistance to the next government can be formed. This is inextricably linked to the struggle in the trade unions and workplaces against any form of class collaboration. This also means demanding that the SPD and its members say no to any coalition with the CDU/CSU. Those militant layers of workers and social movements that have repeatedly taken to the streets in recent years and have also adopted a more militant position in trade union and social struggles, even if they themselves are characterised by (left-wing) reformism, play a key role in this.
In this way, the leadership crisis of the class in the struggle against the rule of misery can be resolved at least to some extent in a positive way. It is a central task of the Left Party, the radical left, trade unionists and social movements to form a class-struggle policy against the incoming government. To this end, we must use all approaches of nationwide conferences and assemblies, such as the conference on trade union renewal from 2 to 4 May, to build a unity of action of resistance.
Endnote
(1) The figures on the provisional official final result, voter flows, vote shares by age group or occupation can be found at
https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2025-02-23-BT-DE/index.shtml
It should also be noted here that the categories on which the voter surveys are based, such as „workers“, „employees“ and „civil servants“, do not correspond to Marxist concepts. Nevertheless, they provide a – frightening – tendency of the voting behaviour of wage earners.