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The German Parliament meets for its last regular session before the general elections.
Michael Kappeler | Image Alliance | Getty images
The Germans went to the surveys on Sunday to vote in the federal elections of 2025, which is guaranteed to result in a new chancellor who takes care of Olaf Scholz to lead the largest economy in Europe.
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its affiliate, the Christian Social Union (CSU) have been surveying first in the period prior to the elections, putting their main candidate Friedrich Merz online for the Foreign Ministry.
It is expected that the extreme right -wing alternative Fuer Deutschland (AFD) will remain second in the row, ahead of the Scholz Social Democratic Party (SPD), which have also been part of the most recent ruling coalition that collapsed late last year.
This marks a change of the 2021 The choice, when the SPD came out at the top, followed by the CDU/CSU. The AFD secured fourth place at that time.
The Germans will cast two votes in the surveys, one to directly choose a member of the Parliament to represent their constituency and another for a list of matches. The second vote will determine the proportional composition of the German Parliament, the Bundestag, with the parties that send their candidates for Berlin to guarantee representation.
There is also a threshold of 5% that the parties must meet to implement delegates in the Bundestag. Several of the smallest parties, including the left, the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), have been surveying for a long time around this brand, with the left that rose slightly in recent days.
Coalition building
Attention will change to the process of construction of the coalition after the vote. It is rare for a German party to obtain an absolute majority, and any group ensures the largest number of seats in Parliament that generally still has to find governance partners to ensure a ruling majority.
This process can take weeks or even months: the parties have extensive negotiations before installing a coalition agreement detailing their joint policy positions and plans.
“The latest surveys indicate that conservatives (CDU/CSU) will receive most of the votes, but they will need one or two coalition partners (unlikely), probably the SPD and/or the green ones,” said Deutsche Bank analysts In a note earlier this week.
All important parties have said that they will not enter into a coalition with the AFD of the extreme right. The result of the party will still be observed closely due to their popularity growth, despite a series of controversies and research on their behavior, which have also triggered throughout the country protests.
The smallest parties will also be focused on this election: their entrance to Parliament could influence whether a third coalition partner is needed to form a majority government. They could also be key if the new government wants to make any change in the Constitution, which requires the support of a two -thirds majority that the smallest parts could effectively block.
Early elections
The choice is carried out several months earlier than originally planned due to the rupture of the so -called traffic light coalition, which was composed of Scholz ‘SPD, the Green Party and the FDP, in November. The Alliance had been in power since he took over the long -term Foreign Minister Angela Merkel in 2021.
Months of political disputes and disagreements within the coalition on economic, fiscal and budgetary policy finally led to the collapse of the government, such as Scholz dismissed Former finance minister Christian Lindner.
Then measures were taken to activate a quick choice, which has only happened three times in the history of Germany. Scholz first had to ask for a vote of self -confidence in the country’s parliament, before suggesting the last dissolution to the German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
The Head of State then dissolved the Chamber of Representatives of Parliament, establishing the date of Sunday’s elections.
