Newsletter #25: The AfD come second in German Federal Elections

PLUS: Keir Starmer’s Ukraine gambit; and my thoughts on ARC and D'ARC

Good morning.

In Britain, it’s not been the most exciting week. Instead, we turn our analysis to foreign elections (Germany) and foreign relations (Ukraine). Oh, and you can read my take on ARC (and D’ARC).

This newsletter’s agenda: The AfD come second in German Federal Elections (free); Keir Starmer’s Ukraine gambit (paid); ARC and D’ARC: some thoughts (paid).

The AfD come second in German Federal Election

It’s finally here: the second coming of the Third Reich; the Götterdämmerung of the libtards; the 2025 Federal Election Putsch by the Fatherland’s lesbian Brunhilda and her Sri Lankan partner. Yes, the German Federal Election has happened, and Alternative for Germany (AfD), under the steely sapphic rule of Generalfeldmarschall Alice Weidel, have come second.

The right-wing populist AfD won all but three constituencies in the former East Germany ex Berlin. Meanwhile, in West Germany, the ‘first vote’ constituency map — with the exception of a couple of red splotches in the Ruhr and Lower Saxony — is almost a solid black, with the centre-right CDU/CSU sweeping every constituency in Bavaria, and virtually every constituency in Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, and Baden-Württemberg. In East Germany, the AfD typically registered vote shares between 35% and 40%; in the rest of Germany, outside of major cities, the AfD typically won 15% to 20% of the vote, which is nothing to sneeze at. This means that although the AfD won zero ‘first vote’ and only two two ‘second vote’ constituencies outside of the former East Germany, it is increasingly inaccurate to claim that they are merely an ‘East German party’. While some might claim that the AfD should have done better, this is a major breakthrough given the extreme institutional hostility the party faces. Expectations should be managed.

A total triumph for the German Right? To some extent, yes. However, in the German system, only 299 of 630 seats in the Bundestag are allocated via the ‘first vote’, which allows voters to choose a ‘direct’ candidate for their single-member, first-past-the-post constituency. The rest are apportioned via the ‘second vote’, which distributes seats roughly proportionally to all parties that won at least 5% of the vote. Moreover, any seats received from the ‘first vote’ will equally reduce the number of seats received from the ‘second vote’. This means that in practice, the power of the parties is almost entirely dependent not on constituency wins, but rather on national vote share.

As such, the results, while certainly very bad for the mainline German Left, are not nearly as extreme in their outcome as the widely-shared, overwhelmingly black-and-blue constituency map suggests. In terms of vote share, which translates almost one-to-one into seats, the CDU came first with 28.5% of the vote (as compared to 24.1% in 2021); the AfD came second with 20.8% (10.3% in 2021); in their worst ever result, the SPD fell to 16.4% (25.7% in 2021); the Greens fell to 11.6% (14.8% in 2021); the far-left Die Linke rose to 8.8% (4.9% in 2021); and the right-liberal FDP fell to 4.3% (11.5% in 2021), thus losing all representation in the Bundestag. The FDP’s leader, Christian Lindner, announced that he would leave politics after the results came out. The left-populist BSW, a new party, won 4.97% of the vote, coming agonisingly close to surpassing the 5% threshold but, like the FDP, ultimately falling short. Sorry, Blue Labour! Turnout was up, from 76.4% in 2021 to an impressive 83.5% in 2025.

For the most part, the results were as expected: no big polling misses this time. The big winner, other than the AfD, is Die Linke (‘The Left’), Europe’s worst political party, combining far-left economics, lunatic social policies, and pro-immigration extremism. Until recently, Die Linke — who find their origins in the ‘Socialist Unity Party’, East Germany’s Communist Party — primarily relied upon aging East German workers and pensioners. However, as their former supporters in East Germany left them for the AfD and (more recently) BSW, they have reinvented themselves, appealing more to the youth. They enjoyed a late surge, primarily at the expense of the SPD and Greens, from below the 5% threshold to just shy of 9%, performing particularly well in Berlin. Their leader, Heidi Reichinnek, has gone viral on social media, most notably in a recent speech that attacked the CDU for seemingly cooperating with the AfD (see below). The CDU, who were polling well above 30% as recently as November, will be disappointed to not have done better. In fact, despite winning, this is their second worst ever result.

In a Bundestag with 630 members, this puts CDU on 208 seats (197 in 2021); the AfD on 151 seats (83 in 2021); SPD on 121 seats (206 in 2021); the Greens on 85 seats (118 in 2021); and Die Linke on 64 seats (39 in 2021). Importantly, because they failed to reach 5% of the vote and did not win in any single constituency, both the FDP (91 seats in 2021) and BSW will now have zero seats. (It is worth noting that prior to a 2023 electoral rule change, the number of members in the Bundestag was not fixed, with 736 members in 2021, meaning that these figures are not strictly comparable.)

It’s somewhat inevitable that all the attention will now focus on Fascism 2.0 and how German democracy is in peril. For one thing, Weidel and the AfD are fun to talk about in a way that Friedrich Merz and the CDU aren’t. Weidel’s posters have a rather stirring Teutonic air to them, with her long blonde hair and slightly horse-like features; the 69-year-old Merz, by contrast, looks like he’s advertising a stolid regional bank (which, like most German banks, will charge you for the pleasure of having an account with them). It’s also much more exciting than discussing the debt brake or heat pumps. You, too, can be part of the great battle for the German soul!

In reality, however, the AfD are supposed to be excluded from normal coalition politics by the Brandmauer, or ‘firewall’. Far from being a moral principle, it was practical politics by Merz’s long-time internal party rival Angela Merkel, who realised that it shored up her flanks and made her move to the Left (opposed to a greater or lesser extent by Merz) difficult to counter. When the AfD was polling around 10%, that was fine; however, now that they are scoring double that, it is making politics impossible. The CDU faces a brutal choice. Go into coalition with the parties of the mainline Left — the SPD and, optionally, due to the failure of both the FDP and BSW to reach the 5% threshold, the Greens also — which will prevent them from enacting the reforms Germany needs? Or go into coalition with the AfD, which would be more than sufficient for a majority, but would cause the mother of all media meltdowns?

Just last month, the CDU dared to let the AfD vote with them on an anti-immigration motion. The result? Their Berlin HQ was surrounded by protesters, several regional offices were occupied by Antifa (with the police doing nothing to remove them), and there were death threats against them. That was merely for letting them vote with the CDU — not even for asking them to do so, let alone entering into a formal arrangement! The German character is, under the autistic exterior, rather hysterical.

Of course, it is highly convenient for the Left that the firewall means the centre-right is pushed into dealing with them alone, so some of this hysteria is self-interested. The reality is that the prior ‘traffic light’ (SPD-FDP-Green) coalition government was an unpopular disaster. The borders remain open, every week seems to bring a new murder involving an asylum seeker, the economy is in the toilet, and unpopular climate change rules are going to make everything even worse. Sure, the Russian invasion of Ukraine (and the Ukrainian saboteurs who presumably blew up Nordstream 2) didn’t help, but the fragile state of Germany is the fault of a feckless political elite who are ideologically committed to mass immigration, degrowth, and expanding the welfare state.

Although resolving the asylum crisis is tricky because it would involve overriding various international agreements, there’s a lot which could be done immediately on the economy and welfare. Denying Bürgergeld welfare to the 50% of recipients who are foreign would be a good start. Any CDU coalition with the Left will make this extremely hard, however. We can already look at state elections in the East, where the AfD have come first or second, only to be frozen out, to see what will presumably happen next. Awkward state coalitions of every party other than the AfD have denied them power, but find themselves gridlocked because that is the only thing that they agree on.

The result is that the AfD will become the official opposition, and watch as the mainstream parties discredit themselves even further. The only thing better for the AfD — and worse for Germany — than the near-certain ‘Grand Coalition’ (CDU-SPD) would be the nightmare ‘Kenya coalition’ (CDU-SPD-Green). Germany has been spared at least that humiliation, at least for now.

— Anonymous Contributor, Pimlico Journal

Keir Starmer’s Ukraine gambit