Angela Merkel Makes History in German Vote, but So Does Far Right
BERLIN — Angela Merkel won a fourth term as chancellor in elections on Sunday, placing her in the front ranks of Germany’s
postwar leaders, even as her victory was dimmed by the entry of a
far-right party into parliament for the first time in more than 60
years, according to preliminary results.
The far-right party, Alternative for Germany, or AfD, got some 13 percent of the vote — nearly three times the 4.7 percent it received in 2013 — a significant showing of voter anger over immigration and inequality as support for the two main parties sagged from four years ago.
Ms.
Merkel and her center-right Christian Democrats won, the center held,
but it was weakened. The results made clear that far-right populism —
and anxieties over security and national identity — were far from dead
in Europe.
They
also showed that Germany’s mainstream parties were not immune to the
same troubles that have afflicted mainstream parties across the
Continent, from Italy to France to Britain.
“We
expected a better result, that is clear,” Ms. Merkel said Sunday night.
“The good thing is that we will definitely lead the next government.”
She
said that she would listen to those who voted for the Alternative for
Germany, or AfD, and work to win them back “by solving problems, by
taking up their worries, partly also their fears, but above all by good
politics,” she said.
But her comments seemed to augur a shift to the right and more of an emphasis on controls over borders, migration and security.
Despite
her victory, Ms. Merkel and her conservatives cannot rule alone, making
it probable that the chancellor’s political life in her fourth term
will be substantially more complicated.
The
shape and policies of a new governing coalition will involve weeks of
painstaking negotiations. Smiling, Ms. Merkel said Sunday night that she
hoped to have a new government “by Christmas.”
The
center-left Social Democrats, Ms. Merkel’s coalition partners for the
last four years, ran a poor second to her center-right grouping, and the
Social Democrats announced Sunday evening that the party would go into
opposition, hoping to rebuild their political profile.
But
the step would also make sure that the AfD, stays on the political
sidelines and does not become the country’s official opposition.
The
Alternative for Germany nonetheless vowed to shake the consensus
politics of Germany, and in breaking a postwar taboo by entering
parliament, it already had.
Alexander
Gauland, one of AfD’s leaders, told party supporters after the results
that in parliament: “We will go after them. We will claim back our
country.”
To cheers, he said: “We did it. We are in the German parliament and we will change Germany.”
Burkhard
Schröder, an AfD member since 2014 from Düsseldorf, was ecstatic. “We
are absolutely euphoric here,” he said. “This is a strong victory for us
that has weakened Angela Merkel.”
Up to 700 protesters gathered outside the AfD’s election night party, chanting slogans like “All of Berlin, hate the AfD.”
“It’s
important to show that it’s not normal that a neofascist party got into
the German parliament,” said Dirk Schuck, 41, a political scientist at
the University of Leipzig.
While
both Ms. Merkel and the Social Democrats lost significant voter support
from 2013, her victory vaults her into the ranks of Konrad Adenauer and
Helmut Kohl, the only postwar chancellors to win four national elections.
The election is a remarkable capstone for Ms. Merkel, 63, the first East German and the first woman to become chancellor.
It
also represents a vindication of her pragmatic leadership and
confidence in her stewardship of Europe’s largest economy and of the
European Union itself in the face of populism, challenges from Russia
and China and uncertainty created by the unpredictable policies of
President Trump.
Even
so, the advance of the far right was a cold slap for her and the
Christian Democratic Union, or CDU. The AfD made particular inroads in
the former East Germany but also in Bavaria, where Ms. Merkel’s sister
party, the Christian Social Union, or CSU, has long ruled but lost some
10 percent of its vote over 2013.
Horst Seehofer, the CSU leader, said: “We made the mistake of having the right flank open.”
A
critic of Ms. Merkel’s immigration policies, he added: “We have a
vacuum on the right, we will close it with politics that ensure Germany
remains Germany.”
The late leader of that party, Franz-Josef Strauss, said in 1986 that the party should allow no one to run to their right. “To the right of us there is only the wall,” he said.
Mr. Seehofer echoed that insight Sunday night. But others cautioned calm.
“We
will remember today in history,” said Thomas Heilmann, a member of
parliament from the CDU, in an email interview. “As in the U.S., hate
became part of politics. The CDU cannot and must not match this
attitude.”
Governing
Germany “will become more difficult,” Mr. Heilmann added. “It is
definitely not a good day for Germany and most likely not good for
Europe either.”
Clemens
Fuest, the director of IFO, the Institute for Economic Research in
Munich, said that the results showed wide concern about “security,
immigration and possible challenges to the German economic model, like
globalization,” he said.
These mattered more than the Social Democrats’ concentration on injustice and inequality, he said.
The
other parties should make less of the AfD showing “and instead ask
themselves what questions they have not answered” — questions of
borders, migration and the pressures on Germany to do more to prop up
other countries of the European Union.
Ms.
Merkel’s conservative bloc won some 32.9 percent of the vote, sharply
down from 41.5 percent in 2013, the early results showed.
The Social Democrats slumped to 20.8 percent, a new postwar low, down from 25.7 percent four years ago.
If
the Social Democrats hold to their intention to go into opposition, Ms.
Merkel will be faced with an unusually difficult task to form a working
coalition. Given the numbers, it would seem that she will have to
cobble together her own Christian Democrat-Christian Social Union bloc
together with two other parties.
The
potential new partners inhabit virtually opposite poles on the
political spectrum — the pro-business Free Democrats, who won some 10.4
percent of the vote, and the left-leaning pro-environment Greens, who
won about 9 percent.
At the Christian Democrat headquarters, Frank Wexler, a Berliner, called the results “a bit depressing.”
Grand
coalitions had allowed the small parties to gain ground, he said. “The
main parties are getting smaller,” Mr. Wexler said. To counteract the
AfD, he said, “We need to address the issue of strengthening the
borders.”
But
Mr. Wexler said he was most disturbed by the AfD’s hostility to the
European Union. “This is what Germany needs to do — be a strong leader
in Europe.”
But
Hans Kundnani, an expert on Germany with the German Marshall Fund, said
that Ms. Merkel might fail to create the three-party coalition, putting
the Social Democrats under great pressure to join another coalition
rather than forcing new elections.
To
Mr. Kundnani, “the big shock is not the AfD,” but the loss of support
for Ms. Merkel’s conservatives and the increasing fragmentation of
German political life.
Germany
has a complicated system of proportional representation, in which each
voter casts one ballot for their local representative and one ballot for
a political party. Those elected locally get their seats.
But
the parties’ overall share of seats in parliament is determined by the
percentage of votes they win. Turnout was 75.9 percent, up from 71.5
percent in 2013, but a long way from the 90 percent turnout figures of
the 1980s.
Though
initially reluctant to run for a fourth term, Ms. Merkel threw herself
into the campaign, especially as the government has brought some order
to the chaos engendered in 2015 when she threw the country’s borders
open to refugees and migrants.
But
the backlash over the migrant crisis, coupled with her long period in
office and the wishy-washy nature of grand coalition politics, has led
to more support for the more extreme, anti-European parties like the AfD
and The Left, the heir of the East German Communist Party, which came
in third in 2013 and won about 9 percent of the vote on Sunday.
In
Dresden, Gert Frülling, 75, a retiree, declined to divulge his party
preference, but made it clear that he was sympathetic to some of the
Alternative for Germany’s proposals.
“It
all happened too fast,” he said, referring to the time after Germany’s
reunification. “Dresdenis a city of bureaucrats and soldiers, and they
dumped all this multiculturalism on us at once. I know we had to change,
but it should have happened more gradually.”
He
said it would be wrong for other parties to refuse to work with the AfD
in Parliament. “If they present good ideas,” he said, “I think it’s not
fair to boycott them.”
In
Neustadt, a gentrifying area of Dresden, Rebecca Klingenburg, 20, was
clearly excited to be one of an estimated three million first-time
voters.
“One
gets to decide on what country one wants to live,” she said. A
mechanical-engineering student, Ms. Klingenburg said she was voting to
maintain Germany’s orientation toward Europe, at a time of rising
nationalism.
“I learned four languages in school,” she said. “I want to make sure that we stay internationally oriented.”
