Federal elections were held in Germany on 26 September 2021 to elect the members of the 20th Bundestag. State elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern were also held. Incumbent chancellor Angela Merkel, first elected in 2005, chose not to run again, marking the first time that an incumbent Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany did not seek re-election.
With 25.7% of total votes, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) recorded their best result since 2005, and emerged as the largest party for the first time since 2002. The ruling CDU/CSU, which had led a grand coalition with the SPD since 2013, recorded their worst ever result with 24.1%, a significant decline from 32.9% in 2017. Alliance 90/The Greens achieved their best result in history at 14.7%, while the Free Democratic Party (FDP) made small gains and finished on 11.4%. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) fell from third to fifth place with 10.4%, a decline of 2.3 percentage points. The Left suffered their worst showing since their official formation in 2007, failing to cross the 5% electoral threshold by just over one-tenth of a percentage point. The party was nonetheless entitled to full proportional representation, as it won three direct mandates. The South Schleswig Voters' Association (SSW) was exempt from the 5% threshold and won 1 seat, the first time it held national representation since 1949.
With a fifth grand coalition being dismissed by both the CDU/CSU and the SPD, the FDP and the Greens were considered kingmakers. On 23 November, following complex coalition talks, the SPD, FDP and Greens formalized an agreement to form a traffic light coalition, which was approved by all three parties. Olaf Scholz and his cabinet were elected by the Bundestag on 8 December.
Irregularities in Berlin led to repeat elections in February 2023 (state) and February 2024 (federal). The result of the federal repeat election meant that the FDP lost a seat in the Bundestag, while 3 other seats were moved from Berlin to different states.
Background.
2017 federal election and government formation.
The 2017 federal election was held after a four-year grand coalition between the CDU/CSU and the SPD. Though the CDU/CSU remained the biggest parliamentary group, both it and the SPD suffered significant losses. The SPD leadership, recognising the party's unsatisfactory performance after four years in government, announced that it would go into opposition. With the CDU/CSU having pledged not to work with either the AfD or The Left before the federal election, the only remaining option for a majority government was a Jamaica coalition consisting of the CDU/CSU, FDP, and the Greens. Exploratory talks between the parties were held over the next six weeks, though the FDP withdrew from the negotiations on 20 November, citing irreconcilable differences between the parties on migration and energy policies. Chancellor Angela Merkel consulted with President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who implored all parties to reconsider in order to avoid fresh elections.
The SPD and their leader Martin Schulz indicated their willingness to enter into discussions for another coalition government with the CDU/CSU. The SPD leadership voted to enter into exploratory discussion on 15 December 2017 and at a party congress in January 2018 a majority of the party's delegates voted to support the coalition talks. The text of the final agreement was agreed to by the CDU/CSU and the SPD on 7 February, though was conditioned on the approval of a majority of the SPD's party membership. The 463,723 members of the SPD voted to approve or reject the deal from 20 February to 2 March, with the result announced on 4 March. A total of 78.39% of members cast valid votes, of which 66.02% voted in favor of another grand coalition. Merkel was voted in by the Bundestag for a fourth term as chancellor on 14 March, with 364 votes for, 315 against, 9 abstentions, and 4 invalid votes, just 9 more votes than the 355 needed for a majority. The new government was officially referred to as the Fourth Merkel cabinet.
Party leadership changes and political instability.
Merkel's final government was subject to intense instability. The 2018 German government crisis saw the longstanding alliance between the CDU and CSU threaten to split over asylum seeker policy. Interior Minister and CSU leader Horst Seehofer threatened to undercut Merkel's authority by closing German borders for asylum seekers registered in another European Union (EU) country. The split, eventually repaired following a summit with EU countries, threatened to bring down the government. Following his party's historically low result in the 2018 Bavarian state election, Seehofer was replaced as CSU leader by new Bavarian Minister-President Markus Söder at a party conference in January 2019, while he retained his position as Interior Minister in the Fourth Merkel cabinet.
In October 2018, Merkel announced that she would resign as leader of the CDU at the party's conference in December 2018 and step down as Chancellor of Germany at the forthcoming election, following poor results at state elections for the CSU in Bavaria and for the CDU in Hesse. Merkel's allegedly preferred candidate for the party leadership, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, narrowly defeated Friedrich Merz, who had been a rival of Merkel around 2002 and had left politics in 2009 criticising her decisions and leadership. Kramp-Karrenbauer struggled to unify the party's liberal and conservative factions, and in February 2020, when she failed to lead the Thuringia state CDU towards a solution of the government crisis there, she announced her intention to withdraw her interest in running as the CDU nominee for chancellor at the election and step down as party leader. A party convention to elect a new leader was scheduled for April but was repeatedly delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The election was held in January 2021, with Armin Laschet, incumbent Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, winning with 52.8% of delegate votes. Merz was his main opponent at 47.2%.
The other party in the coalition government, the SPD, also had leadership instability. Following their worst general election result since 1945, at the beginning of the new government the party elected Andrea Nahles as their leader in April 2018. Nahles had already been elected leader of the SPD parliamentary group after the federal election in September when the party still planned to go into opposition. She was unsuccessful in improving the party's stock with the electorate as it continued to slide in opinion polls and was for the first time in history well beaten by the centre-left party Alliance 90/The Greens at the 2019 European Parliament election. She resigned on 2 June 2019, precipitating a leadership election for the SPD. Progressive candidates Norbert Walter-Borjans and Saskia Esken defeated the more moderate candidates Olaf Scholz and Klara Geywitz, and were elected co-leaders by the party's membership. Their election raised prospects of the coalition government collapsing and early elections being called, although Reuters reported that the duo would seek to achieve agreement from the CDU/CSU on increasing public spending rather than allow the government to collapse. In August 2020, the party appointed Merkel's deputy Vice-Chancellor Scholz as its candidate for chancellor at the election, despite him having lost to Walter-Borjans and Esken in the party leadership election.
Cem Özdemir and Simone Peter stood down as co-leaders of the Greens after the failed Jamaica negotiations, and Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck were elected as their successors in January 2018. Dissatisfaction with the SPD and the federal government saw a rise in Greens' polling numbers throughout 2018. They scored record results in the Bavarian and Hessian state elections in October and subsequently surpassed the SPD in public opinion, settling in second behind the CDU/CSU for the next three years. The party had its best ever showings at the 2019 European Parliament election, 2020 Hamburg state election, and 2021 Baden-Württemberg state election. They briefly polled in first place during two brief periods, first after the 2019 European Parliament election and again after the nomination of chancellor candidates in April 2021.
The Left also underwent a change in leadership, with Katja Kipping and Bernd Riexinger stepping down after nine years as party co-leaders. They were succeeded by Janine Wissler and Susanne Hennig-Wellsow at a party conference held digitally on 27 February 2021. Wissler is considered a member of the party's left wing, formerly aligned with the Socialist Left faction, while Hennig-Wellsow is considered a moderate and part of the party's pragmatic wing. Both support their party's participation in federal government, particularly Hennig-Wellsow, who played a major role in the red–red–green coalition government of The Left, the SPD, and the Greens in the state of Thuringia.
Electoral system.
Germany uses the mixed-member proportional representation system, a system of proportional representation combined with elements of first-past-the-post voting. The Bundestag has 598 nominal members, elected for a four-year term; these seats are distributed between the sixteen German states in proportion to the states' number of eligible voters.
Each voter can cast two votes: a constituency vote (first vote) and a state party list vote (second vote). Based solely on the first votes, 299 members are elected in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting. The second votes are used to produce a proportional number of seats for parties, first in the states, and then in the Bundestag. Seats are allocated using the Sainte-Laguë method. If a party wins fewer constituency seats in a state than its second votes would entitle it to, it receives additional seats from the relevant state list. Parties can file lists in every single state under certain conditions, such as a fixed number of supporting signatures. Parties can receive second votes only in those states in which they have filed a state list. If a party, by winning single-member constituencies in one state, receives more seats than it would be entitled to according to its second vote share in that state, the excess seats become known as overhang seats; to avoid negative vote weight, those overhang seats are compensated for in the other states, restoring proportionality according to second votes cast nationwide.
To qualify for proportional seat distribution, a party must receive more second votes nationwide than the electoral threshold of 5%. This requirement is waived for parties winning at least three single-member constituencies. As result of this waiver, parties have benefited on three occasions, such as the DP in the 1957 West German federal election and the PDS in the 1994 German federal election. Parties representing recognized national minorities are exempt from the electoral threshold. As of 2021, these minorities are the Danish, Frisians, Sorbs, and Romani people.
Date assignment process.
The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany and the Federal Election Act provides that federal elections must be held on a Sunday or on a federal holiday no earlier than 46 and no later than 48 months after the first sitting of the preceding session, unless a snap election is called or a state of defence is declared. Under this rule, the 2021 federal election had to take place on a Sunday between 29 August and 24 October (inclusive), as the previous 19th Bundestag had held its first sitting on 24 October 2017. The President of Germany sets the exact date for the election. On 9 December 2020, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier ordered the election to be held on 26 September 2021.
Observers and false claims of voter fraud.
For the fourth time since 2009, the 2021 federal election was observed by OSCE, providing four experts from three OSCE states.
The Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy (CeMAS) found that false claims of voter fraud had become commonplace on Telegram in Germany, with accusations against Dominion Voting Systems being common despite the company's technology not being used in German elections. CeMAS researcher Miro Dittrich said, "We have seen far-right actors try to claim election fraud since at least 2016, but it didn't take off. When Trump started telling the 'big lie', it became a big issue in Germany, sometimes bigger than the pandemic, because far-right groups and the AfD are carefully monitoring the success Trump is having with this narrative."
Political parties and candidates.
The table below lists the parliamentary groups of the 19th Bundestag.
Lead candidates.
After the election of Minister-President of North Rhine-Westphalia, Armin Laschet as federal CDU chairman in January 2021, he became the presumptive CDU nominee for the Union's joint chancellor candidacy. Laschet was challenged by Minister-President of Bavaria Markus Söder of the CSU, who consistently polled well among voters and had been discussed as a potential candidate since