Exit polls say CDU/CSU leads with 29% – DW – 02/23/2025

Martin Schirdewan, MEP and former leader of the Left party has told DW that his party’s reelection to the parliament was mostly due to the conservative CDU/CSU bloc. After conservative leader Merz used votes by the far-right AfD to push through a motion in parliament, German voters were driven the Left as the “antifacist” party, Schirdewan said.

Exit poll results were welcomed with loud cheers at the Left party headquarters. The party is projected to win 8.5% support, after months of polling under the 5% hurdle that it needed to clear in order to enter the Bundestag.

DW correspondent Michaela Küfner reported that attendees at the CDU election party seemed relieved to have come first, after initial exit polling gave the party 29%.

“Instant celebrations but nobody was ecstatic,” Küfner said, explaining that many CDU members would have hoped to have reached the “psychologically important” 30%. 

There was “no wow factor,” but certainly a sigh of relief that a “grand coalition” with two centrist parties, CDU and SPD, is now a possibility, in order to avoid more complex coalition talks.

Here are the latest projections of German election results, updated in real time.

The exit polls of the 2025 German election are in, showing the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) winning the highest percentage of seats with 29%. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) were the runners-up with just under 20%. Coming in third were the ruling center-left Social Democrats (SPD) with 16% just edging their current coalition partners, the Greens, on 13.5%

Turnout is reported to be 84% — the highest since 1990.

The election of Germany’s new chancellor by the Bundestag won’t take place until a governing coalition has been formed. This process could take months. 

If these initial projections hold, CDU/CSU candidate Friedrich Merz could now be the frontrunner to succeed Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Scholz’s outgoing government will remain in office on a caretaker basis until the Bundestag elect a new chancellor.

DW’s Katharina Kroll spoke to Social Democrat supporters at the SPD headquarters in Berlin as the troubled center-left party braces for the election result.

“We are celebrating that the election campaign is over and are happy about every percentage point that we hopefully get more than the polls predict,” Arnulf Triller from the SPD in the state of Brandenburg told DW.

Triller is counting on last-minute support from the many undecided voters, who in the last election in 2021 helped the SPD to a brilliant comeback and which ultimately saw Olaf Scholz become German chancellor.

Another party member, Melanie Marx-Bouriat, wants to be with her comrades when the results come in.

“We suffer as a group when we suffer,” she told DW, hoping that the SPD can enter into a coalition government with Friedrich Merz’s center-right CDU/CSU alliance.

“In these times, it is important that the SPD helps shape things and maintains social balance,” she said.

Attendees at the Left Party’s headquarters were in a good mood, DW correspondent Marcel Fürstenau reports.

They have good reason to be in high spirits. Many had pronounced the party electorally dead but, according to recent polls, the Left party is certain to enter the Bundestag. They have been estimated to reach as high as 8%, a considerable increase since, as recently as December, they were posting just 3%.

Jan Korte, the long-standing parliamentary director of the Left Party, who is leaving the parliament, said he no longer doubted that the party will make it back into the Bundestag.

“This will sweeten my farewell,” he told DW.  

Claim: Some users claim on social media that you are not allowed to use a pencil to cast your vote in Germany as the vote could be manipulated or erased. There seems to be confusion in general whether it is allowed to use an erasable pencil at all.

The facts: According to the Federal Electoral Regulations and Section 50 of the Federal Election Code, there is no specification about what type of pen is best for filling in the ballot paper. It merely states that a pen should be available in the polling booth. 

The Federal Returning Officer specifies this: Ballpoint pens, felt-tip pens, ink pens and pencils all count as writing pens — the latter do not have to be document-proof either. If you still prefer to bring your own pen, you should make sure that no ink seeps through the paper when folding the ballot paper, as otherwise it may no longer be possible to clearly see where the cross was placed, and the ballot might then be declared invalid.

The individual election committees are made up of members from a wide range of parties, and the counting of the votes cast is public, so manipulation by third parties is ruled out.

However, one thing that does violate the Federal Election Code in these posts is the photos that have been attached to the claims: “No photographs or films may be taken in the polling booth,” according to Section 56 of the Federal Election Code, which regulates the voting process. It is also not permitted to show others who you have voted for on your ballot.

The mood among the Greens at their election party in the Kreuzberg neighborhood of Berlin sits somewhere between anxiety and hope, DW correspondent Jens Thureau reports.

With less than an hour until the initial results are rolled out, big party names have not yet arrived at the gathering.

The conversations in the corridors and in the main hall revolve more around the current geopolitical situation than the actual election result. Many are wondering what will happen if US President Trump gets serious and abandons support for Ukraine. The gravity of the situation seems to weigh more heavily than whether the Greens end up with 12 or 14% of the vote in today’s election.

Some 3 to 4 million German citizens live outside the country, although not all are eligible to vote. Around 213,000 Germans living abroad had registered to vote in Sunday’s election.

It was a significant jump from the 129,000 in the last nationwide parliamentary election in 2021.

But many of the potential voters did not receive their ballots in time.  

Monika Schroeder, who lives in the US state of Pennsylvania, told DW that she received her ballot materials on Friday, just two days before the vote. 

“I’m upset and feel powerless, because every vote counts,” Schroeder said.

She is now considering joining a class action lawsuit after the election. 

On Friday, Germany’s Federal Returning Officer Ruth Brand said her office had received complaints about election documents that had not yet arrived or had only just arrived at their destinations in foreign countries.

She said her office has done everything “to make it easier for Germans living abroad to vote by post,” but added that “neither the electoral bodies nor the German authorities can influence the postal delivery abroad.”

German voters do not directly elect their country’s head of government. Rather, the position of chancellor is determined by the parties who form the government. Generally, that means the leader of the largest party.

But that doesn’t mean that voters don’t have their preferences, as this poll by public broadcaster ARD revealed earlier in February:

DW’s livestream on the election is available on our TV channel, on YouTube, or in the window above. Follow us for minute-by-minute election coverage.

Exit polls are scheduled at 6 p.m. local time with projections that are regularly updated. Polls have so far been quite accurate, though official results will likely not be known until Monday.

It will likely take weeks or months before a new government or a ruling coalition takes shape.

Preliminary polling data has revealed a potentially high turnout at this year’s German election.

As of 2 p.m. German time, four hours before polls are set to close, turnout was calculated at around 52% —  a significant increase on the 36.5% recorded at the same stage in 2021. The previous parliamentary election concluded with a turnout at 76.4%.

A higher turnout at polling stations this year could be linked to a reduction in the number of postal votes compared to 2021, when Germany was still in the grips of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the latest figures are also considerably higher than the 2017 election, when the turnout was at 41% by mid-afternoon.

The number of parties vying for seats in the German parliament is on the rise. While this reflects a diverse political landscape, it also brings challenges: forming a stable majority and creating a functional government is becoming increasingly difficult.

DW chief political correspondent Nina Haase explained that Germany’s Social Democrat Chancellor (SPD) Olaf Scholz remains confident in his cautious approach to foreign policy.

As chancellor, Scholz launched an effort to modernize Germany’s military after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and made Germany Ukraine’s second-biggest weapons supplier.

But he remained steadfast in his decision not to give Ukraine Taurus long-range missiles and stressed the need to act “prudently” even when pressure grew.

Friedrich Merz, chancellor candidate and leader of the Christian Democrats (CDU) has shifted the party “back to the conservative camp” and remains in “favor of supplying” Taurus missiles if other partners agree, explained DW’s chief political editor Michaela Küfner.