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The afternoon sun shines in the German Bundestag Reichstag building with the inscription “Deutschen Volke.
Fabian Sommer | Image Alliance | Getty images
Berlin – The Christian Democratic Union and the Allied Christian Social Union secured most of the votes in the German federal elections on Sunday, according to the exit surveys of the German station ZDF.
This puts the main candidate of the party, Friedrich Merz in a privileged position to assume the position of Olaf Scholz as chancellor of the largest economy in Europe.
The CDU-CSU won 28.5% of the votes, with the AFD of the extreme right in the second place with 20% and the Scholz Social Democrat .
In the period prior to the elections, the CDU And its regional brother party, the Christian Social Union led in the polls, with a support a little just before the vote. The extreme right AFD was surveying secondly, followed by the SPD.
This marked a fall in the support for the SPD, which took first place during the 2021 Choice, followed by the CDU/CSU. The AFD secured fourth place at that time.
The Germans cast two votes on Sunday, one to directly choose a member of the Parliament to represent their constituency and another for a list of matches. The second vote determined the proportional composition of the German Parliament, the Bundestag, with the parties that sent their candidates to Berlin to guarantee representation.
The parties must also comply with a threshold of 5% in order to obtain seats in Parliament. Crucially, groups that tend to ensure this level of votes often become the so -called creators of kings of coalition construction after the elections.
A key approach around the elections has been how they are going to the smallest parties, which could affect both the construction of the coalition and the capacity of the incoming government to reform the constitutional rules, for example, around expenses and debts . They would need a two -thirds majority to do so.
The observers were also closely observing the performance of the extreme right AFD in the middle of a broader political change to the right worldwide.
The election comes at a tumultuous moment for Germany, both politically and economically.
The Sunday vote is only the fourth early election in the history of the country and took place after the former ruling coalition composed of the SPD, the Green Party and the free Democratic Party collapsed at the end of last year, in another rarity for local policy . Long -term disagreements deeply rooted among economic, fiscal and budgetary policies had led to the Union. Effective rupture.
These policies will also be the upper part of the agenda when it comes to the process of construction of the coalition after the elections and then the governance, especially due to the Slow German economywhich contracted both in 2023 and 2024. More concerns are ahead, including a strong approach to exports, a housing construction crisis and difficulties in the key automatic sector.
The new ruling coalition will also have to deal with a fierce domestic debate about migration, the growing popularity of the extreme right and the widest tensions between Europe and the United States as President Donald Trump advances his trade and war policies of Ukraine in Ukraine in His second term.
