{"id":2405798,"date":"2025-02-23T16:56:02","date_gmt":"2025-02-23T21:56:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/conservative-opposition-wins-german-election-afd-in-second-with-strongest-postwar-result-washington-examiner\/"},"modified":"2025-02-23T16:57:23","modified_gmt":"2025-02-23T21:57:23","slug":"conservative-opposition-wins-german-election-afd-in-second-with-strongest-postwar-result-washington-examiner","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/conservative-opposition-wins-german-election-afd-in-second-with-strongest-postwar-result-washington-examiner\/","title":{"rendered":"Conservative opposition wins German election, AfD in second with strongest postwar result &#8211; Washington Examiner"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">30<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fconservative-opposition-wins-german-election-afd-in-second-with-strongest-postwar-result-washington-examiner%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2405798&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>In the recent German election, conservative opposition leader\u200c Friedrich Merz emerged \u200bvictorious, while\u2062 the far-right\u200d Alternative for \u200dGermany (AfD) party achieved its strongest electoral performance since \u2063World War II, nearly doubling its\u200d support. The center-left Social Democrats, lead by Chancellor Olaf Scholz, suffered a significant defeat, finishing third with their worst results since postwar elections. Scholz&#8217;s coalition government collapsed earlier, leading to\u2064 a sense of \u2062discontent among voters regarding economic stagnation and migration issues.<\/p>\n<p>Merz&#8217;s Union\u200b bloc obtained approximately 28.5% of the vote, and AfD garnered around 20.5%. This election,held earlier than scheduled due to the previous government&#8217;s unpopularity,was marked by low enthusiasm for candidates. Merz \u200cfaces challenges in \u2063forming \u200da coalition government, as he has ruled out partnerships with AfD, complicating the potential coalition \u200dlandscape.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, AfD has signaled its openness to coalition negotiations, claiming a central political position, although mainstream parties, including Merz&#8217;s, \u2062have dismissed such possibilities. The outcome suggests a shift in Germany&#8217;s political landscape, with implications for its role in Europe and its policies, notably concerning \u2064foreign relations and economic recovery.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<p><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><?xml encoding=\"utf-8\" ?><\/p>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-button\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-icon td-icon-mobile\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-header-search-button-mob dropdown-toggle\" data-toggle=\"dropdown\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-search-icon td-icon-search\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><span class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-button\"><i class=\"tdb-mobile-menu-icon td-icon-mobile\"><\/i><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<div class=\"tdb-drop-down-search\" aria-labelledby=\"td-header-search-button\">\n<div class=\"tdb-drop-down-search-inner\">\n<form method=\"get\" class=\"tdb-search-form\" action=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/\"><\/form>\n<div class=\"tdb-aj-search\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/#\" role=\"button\" aria-label=\"Search\" class=\"tdb-head-search-btn dropdown-toggle\" data-toggle=\"dropdown\"><i class=\"tdb-search-icon td-icon-search\"><\/i><\/a><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<h1 class=\"tdb-title-text\">Conservative opposition wins German election, AfD in second with strongest postwar result<\/h1>\n<div><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-title-line\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\">\n<div id=\"Brid_1999182\" class=\"tpd-featured-video bridtv\"><\/div>\n<p><strong>BERLIN (AP) &mdash;<\/strong> Germany&rsquo;s conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz won a lackluster victory in a national election Sunday, while&nbsp;Alternative for <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/germany\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Germany<\/a>&nbsp;nearly doubled its support, the strongest showing for a hard-right party since World War II, projections showed.<\/p>\n<div class=\"article-paywall\">\n<p>Chancellor <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/olaf-scholz\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Olaf Scholz<\/a> conceded defeat for his center-left Social Democrats after what he called &ldquo;a bitter election result.&rdquo; Projections for ARD and ZDF public television showed his party finishing in third place with its worst postwar result in a national parliamentary <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/elections\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">election<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Merz vowed to move quickly to put together a coalition government. But that&rsquo;s likely to be a complicated task.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A discontented nation<\/h2>\n<p>The election took place seven months earlier than originally planned after Scholz&rsquo;s unpopular coalition&nbsp;collapsed in November, three years into a term that was increasingly marred by infighting. There was widespread discontent and not much enthusiasm for any of&nbsp;the candidates.<\/p>\n<p>The campaign was dominated by worries about the years-long stagnation of&nbsp;Europe&rsquo;s biggest economy&nbsp;and pressure to curb migration &mdash; something that caused friction after Merz&nbsp;pushed hard&nbsp;in recent weeks for a tougher approach. It took place against a background of growing uncertainty over the&nbsp;future of <a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/ukraine\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\">Ukraine<\/a>&nbsp;and Europe&rsquo;s alliance with the United States.<\/p>\n<p>Germany is the most populous country in the 27-nation European Union and a leading member of NATO. It has been Ukraine&rsquo;s second-biggest weapons supplier, after the U.S. It will be central to shaping the continent&rsquo;s response to the challenges of the coming years, including the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/germany-munich-vance-free-speech-election-33e720b820e61db9d5e478e63b4a4dc7\">Trump administration&rsquo;s<\/a>&nbsp;confrontational foreign and trade policy.<\/p>\n<p>The projections, based on exit polls and partial counting, put support for Merz&rsquo;s Union bloc around 28.5% and the Alternative for Germany, or AfD, about 20.5% &mdash; roughly double its result from 2021.<\/p>\n<p>They put support for Scholz&rsquo;s Social Democrats at just over 16%, far lower than in the last election and below their previous all-time low of 20.5% from 2017. The environmentalist Greens, their remaining partners in the outgoing government, were on a little over 12%.<\/p>\n<p>Out of three smaller parties, one &mdash; the hard-left Left Party &mdash; strengthened its position, winning up to 9% of the vote after a remarkable comeback. Two other parties, the pro-business Free Democrats &mdash; who were the third party in the collapsed government &mdash; and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, hovered around the threshold of the 5% support needed to win seats.<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A difficult task for the winner<\/h2>\n<p>Whether Merz will have a majority to form a coalition with Scholz&rsquo;s Social Democrats or need a second partner too will depend on how many parties get into parliament. The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/naked-partisanship-and-influence-peddling-conservatives-blast-bidens-nominee-to-head-omb\/\" title=\"\u2018Naked Partisanship And Influence Peddling\u2019: Conservatives Blast Biden\u2019s Nominee To Head OMB\">conservative leader<\/a> said that &ldquo;the most important thing is to re-establish a viable government in Germany as quickly as possible.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;I am aware of the responsibility,&rdquo; Merz said. &ldquo;I am also aware of the scale of the task that now lies ahead of us. I approach it with the utmost respect, and I know that it will not be easy.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;The world out there isn&rsquo;t waiting for us, and it isn&rsquo;t waiting for long-drawn-out coalition talks and negotiations,&rdquo; he <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\">told cheering supporters<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Greens&rsquo; candidate for chancellor, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, said that Merz would do well to moderate his tone after a hard-fought campaign.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We have seen the center is weakened overall, and everyone should look at themselves and ask whether they didn&rsquo;t contribute to that,&rdquo; said Habeck. &ldquo;Now he must see that he acts like a chancellor.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>The Greens were the party that suffered least from participating in Scholz&rsquo;s unpopular government. The Social Democrats&rsquo; general secretary, Matthias Miersch, suggested that their defeat was no surprise &mdash; &ldquo;this election wasn&rsquo;t lost in the last eight weeks.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A delighted hard-right party doesn&rsquo;t have a partner<\/h2>\n<p>AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla told cheering supporters that &ldquo;we have achieved something historic today.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;We are now the political center and we have left the fringes behind us,&rdquo; he said. The party&rsquo;s strongest previous showing was 12.6% in 2017, when it first entered the national parliament.<\/p>\n<p>The party&rsquo;s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, said it is &ldquo;open for coalition negotiations&rdquo; with Merz&rsquo;s party, and that &ldquo;otherwise, no change of policy is possible in Germany.&rdquo; Merz has repeatedly ruled out working with AfD, as have other&nbsp;mainstream parties&nbsp;&mdash; and did so again in a televised post-election exchange with Weidel and other leaders.<\/p>\n<p>Weidel suggested AfD wouldn&rsquo;t have to make many concessions to secure a theoretical coalition, arguing that the Union largely copied its program and deriding its &ldquo;Pyrrhic victory.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;It won&rsquo;t be able to implement it with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/olaf-scholz-elected-chancellor-of-germany-ending-16-years-of-merkel\/\" title=\"Olaf Scholz Elected ... of ..., Ending 16 ... of Merkel\">left-wing parties<\/a>,&rdquo; she said. If Merz ends up forming an alliance with the Social Democrats and Greens, &ldquo;it will be an unstable government that doesn&rsquo;t last four years, there will be an interim Chancellor Friedrich Merz and in the coming years we will overtake the Union.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>Merz dismissed the idea that voters wanted a coalition with AfD. &ldquo;We have fundamentally different views, for example on foreign policy, on security policy, in many other areas, regarding Europe, the euro, NATO,&rdquo; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&ldquo;You want the opposite of what we want, so there will be no cooperation,&rdquo; Merz added.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/washingtonexaminer.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\" title=\"\"><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Scholz decried AfD&rsquo;s success. He said &ldquo;that must never be something that we will accept. I will not accept it and never will.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>More than 59 million people in the nation of 84 million were eligible to elect the 630 members of the lower house of parliament,&nbsp;the Bundestag, who will take their seats under the glass dome of Berlin&rsquo;s landmark Reichstag building.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p> <script data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/cdn-cgi\/scripts\/5c5dd728\/cloudflare-static\/email-decode.min.js\"><\/script><script>!function(){var g=window;g.googletag=g.googletag||{},g.googletag.cmd=g.googletag.cmd||[],g.googletag.cmd.push(function(){g.googletag.pubads().setTargeting(\"has-featured-video\",\"true\")})}();<\/script><script>var _bp=_bp||[];_bp.push({\"div\":\"Brid_1999182\",\"obj\":{\"id\":\"27789\",\"width\":\"1280\",\"height\":\"720\",\"stickyDirection\":\"below\",\"video\":\"1999182\"}});<\/script><script defer src=\"https:\/\/services.brid.tv\/player\/build\/brid.min.js\"><\/script><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"tdb-block-inner td-fix-index\"><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conservative leader Friedrich Merz wins German election; AfD achieves record support<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2634,"featured_media":2405799,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/germany-election-results.webp","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[47181,50941,50940],"class_list":["post-2405798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-afd","tag-conservative-opposition","tag-german-election"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/germany-election-results.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2634"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2405798"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2405802,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2405798\/revisions\/2405802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2405799"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2405798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2405798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2405798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}