Turnout slipped slightly in Germany’s election despite politicians warning that apathy could boost the far-right, expected to return to Parliament after a half century’s absence, overshadowing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s expected victory.
After shock election results last year, from Britain’s vote to leave the European Union to the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, many look to Ms. Merkel to rally a bruised liberal Western order, tasking her with leading a post-Brexit Europe.
Some 41.1% of voters had cast ballots by 1200 GMT, the Federal Returning Officer said in a statement, down from 41.4% at the same time four years ago, suggesting not all had heeded the advice of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier.
President’s call
“It has perhaps never been as clear that the elections are about the future of democracy and Europe,” he wrote in mass-market newspaper Bild am Sonntag , amid polls showing that as many as a third of Germans were undecided. “If you don’t vote, others decide.”
In Germany’s proportional election system, low turnout can boost smaller parties, such as the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), giving them more seats from the same number of votes.
In regional elections this year, Ms. Merkel’s conservatives suffered setbacks from the AfD, which profited from resentment at her 2015 decision to open German borders to more than one million migrants.
But with the migrant issue under control this year, Ms. Merkel has overcome earlier doubts over running and thrown herself into a punishing campaign schedule, presenting herself as an anchor of stability in an uncertain world.
Visibly happier, Ms. Merkel campaigned with renewed conviction: a resolve to re-tool the economy for the digital age, to head off future migrant crises, and to defend a Western order shaken by Mr. Trump’s victory last November.
Both Ms. Merkel and her main challenger, Social Democrat leader Martin Schulz have warned that low turnout could help extreme parties, especially the AfD, whose arrival in Parliament could signal a break from the steady, consensus-based politics that has marked Germany’s prosperous post-war period. Mr. Schulz, who on Friday described the AfD as “gravediggers of democracy”, on Sunday told reporters he was still optimistic that his party, a distant second in polls, would pick up the votes of the undecided. Ms. Merkel, escorted under an umbrella into the polling station by her scientist husband Joachim Sauer, smiled as she voted in Berlin, but said nothing.
An INSA poll published by Bild newspaper on Saturday suggested that support was slipping for Ms. Merkel’s conservatives, who dropped two percentage points to 34%, and the SPD, down one point to 21%. The two parties now govern Germany in an unwieldy “grand coalition”.
The anti-immigrant AfD rose two points to 13% in the latest poll, putting it on course to be the third-largest party.
Coalition building
“I hope that our democracy can deal with a party that has said, in my view, intolerable things in the media,” said Kathrin Zimmermann, voting in Berlin. “I hope the right-wing pressure doesn't get too strong.” Should she win a fourth term, Ms. Merkel will join Helmut Kohl, her mentor who reunified Germany, and Konrad Adenauer, who led Germany’s rebirth after Second World War, as the only post-war Chancellors to win four national elections.
Coalition-building after the election could be very lengthy as potential partners are unsure whether they really want to share power with Ms. Merkel. All major parties refuse to work with the AfD. Electoral arithmetic might push Ms. Merkel to renew her grand coalition with the SPD, or she might opt for a three-way alliance with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and environmentalist Greens
