Friedrich Merz wins Germany’s election. But forming a coalition will be hard

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. EVEN AS COUNTING continues in Germany’s election, three things are clear. The first is that the opposition conservative Christian Democrats (CDU), along with their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), have won a clear victory—if an underwhelming one, with less than 30% of the vote.

That paves the way for their candidate, Friedrich Merz (pictured), to take over from Olaf Scholz as chancellor after coalition talks. The second is that the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has surged to its best-ever score, with around 20%, a result that will roughly double its number of seats in the Bundestag. The party appears to have performed exceptionally well in its eastern strongholds.

Alice Weidel, the party’s co-leader, hailed the “historic success". The third is the extraordinary turnout. Some 84% of eligible Germans cast a ballot, the highest figure since reunification 35 years ago.

Beyond that, it was a mess. Mr Merz will hope to form a coalition with Mr Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD), who at 16% slumped to their worst defeat in their party’s long history. But under Germany’s electoral rules, whether the main centre-left and centre-right parties will be able to form what used to be known as a “grand" coalition depends entirely on whether the new “left-conservative" Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) will win 5% of the vote; projected counts put the party right on the threshold.

If the BSW falls short, the CDU/CSU and SPD will have a majority, albeit a slender one. If the BSW makes it, the two bigger parties will need to team up with the Greens to obtain a majority. This ideologically messy three-party government is exactly what Mr Merz, who wants to act decisively to