It is the country with the most MEPs, with 96 places. So, obviously, his result was monitored. At the end of this weekend’s election, the conservative CDU/CSU alliance would come out on top in Germany, according to exit polls for ARD and ZDF. Together, the conservatives – the party of the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen – would reach 29.5%, a little more than their 2019 score.
The far-right AfD party would come in second position, with 16%, again according to the same exit polls.
The Social Democrats, one of the parties in the ruling coalition, would therefore record a big setback, partly linked to the unpopularity of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, arriving in third position, with 14% of the vote. The worst score ever recorded by this party for this election. “This is a very bitter result for us,” said Kevin Kuehnert, general secretary of the SPD, adding that his party would have to look into the reasons for the weak mobilization of its supporters.
The Ecologists, who are part of the government coalition, would come in 4th position. They would thus show a real decline compared to 2019. At the time, they came second with 20.5% of the votes, or 21 seats.
Scandals in the far-right campaign
Long well placed in the polls, the German nationalists do not seem to have suffered from the various scandals which marred the campaign.
The head of the list and outgoing MEP Maximilian Krah notably withdrew from the campaign after having assured in an interview with an Italian daily that an SS was “not automatically criminal”. At the end of May, he was also splashed by suspicions of Russian interference and corruption. Two weeks earlier, the number 2 on the list, Petr Bystron, had seen his office searched because of accusations of illegal financing, also from Moscow.
