Conservatives projected to win German snap election

But far-right AfD expected to come second as party attracts record votes with high turnout and future of country at stake

- TOM WATLING

The German conservative opposition is projected to win the most votes in the country’s snap election as the mainstream parties vowed to battle a surge in far-right support off the back of a spate of terror attacks and economic turmoil.

Freidrich Merz, the head of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), hailed his party’s “terrific election campaign” as initial projections gave them 28.5 per cent of the vote. Around 83.5 per cent of Germans turned out to vote, the highest figure since the reunification in 1990.

In second place is the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right group that has called for the deportation of all foreign-born people in Germany who have committed a crime. Projections estimated that around 850,00 CDU voters had defected to the AfD, pushing them to 20.5 per cent of the total vote.

The far-right party’s leader, Alice Weidel, hailed the “historic” election result which saw her party double their vote from 2021. She then suggested the AfD “hand is outstretched” to join a coalition government. To deprive them of that, she added, would be tantamount to “voter fraud”.

Mr Merz said it would be months before the CDU worked out its coalition, until at least Easter. The coalition will require a 316-seat majority, with the CDU projected to have won 209seats themselves. The most likely grouping will be with the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and possibly, also, the Greens, who came third and fourth with a projected 119 and 90 seats respectively. Mr Merz says he would prefer to have just one coalition partner.