Berlin, Germany – In some countries, a snap election is held in a matter of weeks.
Germany, by contrast, will enjoy a leisurely three months before it goes to the polls in an election that is likely to be overshadowed by the return of Donald Trump to the White House, an increasingly perilous situation in Ukraine, and a flagging domestic economy.
Germany’s ruling “traffic light” coalition, formed by the Social Democratic Party (SPD), Greens and Free Democrats (FDP) collapsed on November 6, after Chancellor Olaf Scholz dismissed his finance minister, FDP leader Christian Lindner.
Scholz has announced a vote of confidence will take place on December 16. The snap poll is expected to take place on February 23.
Why did the coalition collapse?
The three-way alliance formed after the 2021 elections was a rarity for Germany, and the FDP’s fiscal hawkishness always made an uneasy marriage with its centre-left partners, who campaigned in the 2021 elections on increased social and climate spending.
The final break came during preparations for the 2025 budget, with Scholz arguing to pause Germany’s “debt brake”, which tightly limits public borrowing. Lindner insisted on demanding major public spending cuts and rolling back climate targets.
Last week in the Bundestag, Scholz accused the FDP leader of pitting the government’s financial and military support for Ukraine against German pensioners.
The national weekly newspaper Die Zeit reported that the FDP had deliberately provoked Scholz to collapse the coalition and force an early election, which the party has denied.
“It was difficult to reconcile those three very different political ideas and ideologies,” said Markus Ziener, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund think tank, who believes infighting has weakened Germany’s position within the European Union at a time when the bloc is sorely in need of leadership.
“The hope could be that the next elections will bring much more stable conditions to form a reliable government.”
Who’s leading opinion polls now?
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party are currently polling at 32 percent, according to a recent INSA poll, more than all three of the coalition parties put together.
Friedrich Merz, a former BlackRock board member who has moved the party rightward since becoming leader in 2022, is therefore well-placed to become the next chancellor.
Based on current polling, he could lead a government with the SPD…