WASHINGTON – The outcome of Germany’s parliamentary elections shows a clear divide in the country between younger and older voters and a lack of support for German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats, according to several experts.
While the Christian Democrats came out on top, the Alternative for Germany party gained 94 seats in the Bundestag, roughly 13 percent of Parliament. Looking at exit polls, a panel on Monday at the German Marshall Fund said the outcome shows the far-right’s influence in eastern portions of Germany.
“There’s a lot of issues where you can see that [East-West] divide: on social issues, on cultural issues, on education issues,” said Janka Oertel, a German Marshall Fund Transatlantic Fellow. “When you look at that data and its different colors, you can, basically, still follow the border.”
East Germans were more likely to support the AfD than were West Germans.
Oertel also said the AfD performed best among middle-aged men but was least influential among the younger generation. Polls from Germany’s last election in 2013 show that younger people believe in their country’s global responsibility more than older people.
“It’s going to be about keeping this younger generation away from AfD ideology, but it’s also about integrating them into the discourses,” she said. “Which is something that is happening, and something you are seeing.”
Anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric were central to the AfD message, with posters and slogans like “New Germans? We’ll make them ourselves” and “Burkas? We prefer bikinis.” But German Marshall Fund President Karen Donfried said the AfD successes were more a sign of voters’ protest against current government policies than in support of anti-Muslim ideologies.
“I was looking at some of the exit polls yesterday, and I think 40 percent of those Germans who voted AfD don’t actually share those beliefs,” she said. “They really did intend it as a protest vote.”
Oertel agreed, saying people voted for the AfD not because it was a political party, but because it was protest of the current system.
“It’s just as problematic, but it says something about the party itself,” she said.
“Because Germany is doing well, do Germans have the luxury of a protest vote?” Donfried said. “These are all questions that we don’t have answers to, and we’ll have to see how this plays out. But it is clear that there is a frustration with the establishment parties.”
Merkel and the Christian Democrats will have to form a coalition, most likely with the Green Party and the Free Democratic Party since the second place Social Democrats appear to want to be the leading opposition party rather than joining forces with Merkel and the CSU.
“CSU is terrible weakened, they lost 10 percentage points,” Oertel said. “They have to find a way to address the requests of the right wing. What that really means I don’t know yet, but we will see.”