Published February 25, 2025
The Euro-elite hope that Sunday’s German election marks the beginning of a German renaissance that lifts the European Union up with it. Perhaps. It’s just as likely to mark the end of the German post-war era, with an uncertain future ahead.
Optimists can point to the clear win by the Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian partner, the Christian Social Union. The pair’s 28.6 percent of the vote was below expectations, but was still comfortably head of the second place Alternative for Germany’s 20.8.
This showing gives the centre-right CDU/CSU 208 seats in the Bundestag, enough to combine with the third-place Social Democrats’ 120 seats to form a clear, if tight, 328 seat majority in the 630-seat chamber.
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Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, studies and provides commentary on American politics. His work focuses on how America’s political order is being upended by populist challenges, from the left and the right. He also studies populism’s impact in other democracies in the developed world.
