Episode 122: The German Bundestag Election Results

Shortly after the polls closed in Germany, Jeff Rathke, Eric Langenbacher, and Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger discussed the results of the snap elections. They give their reactions to the performance of the parties and what motivated such a high turnout. They also predict how the results will impact the coalition formation in the coming months and Germany’s international role in the coming years. Host Jeff Rathke, President, AGI Guests Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger, AGI Non-Resident Senior Fellow Eric Langenbacher, AGI Senior Fellow; Director, Society, Culture & Politics Program Transcript Jeff Rathke Welcome, all listeners, to this election edition of The Zeitgeist. We are speaking on Sunday, February 23, 2025, and I’ll even give the time we are speaking, because results are still coming in. It is 4:00 pm here in Washington, DC, about 10:00 pm in Germany. The polls closed at 6:00 pm in Germany. Here to talk through the situation, the results, and what it means are, as always when we talk about German politics, Eric Langenbacher, who is the senior fellow and director of our Society, Culture & Politics Program. Hello, Eric. Eric Langenbacher Hello, greetings from Berlin. Jeff Rathke And Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger, who is a non-resident senior fellow at AGI, who is with us from Darmstadt, am I not right? Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger You are right. Jeff Rathke And he was for decades the foreign editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Welcome, Klaus. Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger Thank you. How are you? Jeff Rathke Well, very excited to hear what results we’ve got. This is an election campaign that over the last few weeks has taken on some remarkable circumstances or characteristics. First of all, this was an early election—doesn’t happen so often in Germany—but after the coalition of Olaf Scholz collapsed, the day after the U.S. presidential election on November 6, we’ve been headed for an early election. And this election campaign has taken place under the shadow of two particular developments. The first has been a series of attacks that have left several people dead. There have been three major attacks in the last three months, one in Magdeburg in December, it was a car driven into a Christmas market, which killed six people and left 300 people wounded. In the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg in January of this year, there was a knife attack which left two people dead, one child and one adult, and in Munich just over a week ago a car was driven into a pro-union demonstration, leaving two people dead and 39 people injured. These were all attacks, which were carried out by migrants to Germany, in some cases, people who had failed asylum claims and who were supposed to leave the country, and so there was this upswell of focus on the fact that Germany is still struggling with migration many years after the big years of arrivals. The second is more of a geopolitical development. The campaign has been taking place as the Trump administration takes office and rolls out its policies. Here, we see an abrupt change in the U.S. policy toward the war in Ukraine, where the United States is now pushing for a rapid settlement of the war and has moved away, I think it’s fair to say, from the really staunch support of Ukraine. This leaves Europeans unsettled. There is also the parallel question about the United States’ commitment to the security of Europe and in particular through NATO. This external uncertainty and internal turmoil have characterized this election. With that, Eric, what do we see in the numbers that have come out so far?