2025 Federal Election in Germany – Results and Key Takeaways

In a nutshell

• The conservative CDU/CSU have clearly won the German federal election. Friedrich Merz (CDU) will most likely become the next Federal Chancellor.
• As expected, the far-right AfD came out as the second-strongest political force.
• The Social Democrats, led by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, have dramatically lost trust and come out on third place. Nevertheless, the SPD will be part of a government coalition with CDU/CSU.
• The Greens were able to limit their losses, nevertheless lost political influence and will most likely not be part of a future government coalition.
• The Left have successfully made a race to catch up and made it clearly over the 5 percent threshold.
• The former government coalition partner FDP (Liberals) lost dramatically and failed to get over the 5 percent threshold.
• The far-left BSW could also not make it over the 5 percent threshold.
• Since both the FDP (Liberals) and the BSW will not be represented in the new Bundestag, only two future government coalitions seem realistic: CDU/CSU + SPD or CDU/CSU + SPD + Greens, with a coalition of CDU/CSU + SPD being the much more likely.