Parliamentary Elections in Germany : Historical Results

Leopold, 2025-06-19

Discover the results of the legislative election 2025 in Germany and of previous elections. Learn too, which german governments were formed after the past elections.

Germany’s parliament has two chambers : The Bundestag with 630 deputies (since 2025), and the Bundesrat with 69 members that are sent by the country’s 16 regional governments. To enter the Bundestag, german political parties need to get at least 5% of the votes. The legislative period of the Bundestag is 4 years, according to article 39 of the german constitution.

The german parliament elects as well the chancellor, following a proposal of the german president (according to article 63 of the constitution).

The CDU and CSU are two different parties that traditionally form an electoral coalition which is called the « Union ». The CSU does only exist in Bavaria, the CDU in the other 15 regions of Germany. Both parties are commonly labelled as « christian and conservative ».

Since the first parliament elections of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949, the Union and the SPD were the country’s main parties that provided all german chancellors so far.

Let’s now discover the results of the last federal legislative elections (Bundestagswahlen).

The 2025 Germany Election

The election of 23 february 2025 was an anticipated election, following a motion of censure of chancellor Olaf Scholz in december 2024. The election result on 25 february 2025 is as follows :

The Union (CDU and CSU) won the election with 28,6%, before the AFD party which got 20,8%.

The Union result of 28,6% makes it clearly the winner of the 2025 election. However, on a historic scale, it marks the second-worst score in the history of this party coalition since 1949. Only in 2021 there had been a worse result, with 24,2%.

Olaf Scholz, the german chancellor from 2021 until 2025, has to take the responsibility even for the worst performance of the SPD since 1949 – only 16,4%.

Christian Lindner, the FDP party main candidate and previous minister for finance, obtained as well the worst result for his party since 1949 – only 4,3%. Being beneath the 5% line, the FDP will not even be present in the new german Bundestag.

The situation of the Greens is different : Led by the former minister for economy Robert Habeck, the party dropped from 14,7% to 11,6% (a decline by 21%). Nevertheless, 11,6% means the second-best result for the Greens since their first participation in national elections in 1980.

All previous coalition parties (SPD + FDP + Greens) together got only 32,3% of the votes.

Die Linke (« The Left Party ») with its top candidates Heidi Reichinnek and Jan van Aken joined again the Bundestag, for which it did not qualify in 2021.

The AFD – often labelled as a « far right party » – is now the number 2 political force in the german parliament. The american billionaire Elon Musk is one of its most notorious supporters. Musk called the AFD the « best hope for Germany » and made as well a long interview with the AFD party leader Alice Weidel in early 2025.

Friedrich Merz, the top candidate of the Union, will now have the task to form a new government.

Merz excluded a potential government coalition with the AFD in january 2025. Although the Union and the SPD do only represent 45% of all voters, they can form a 2-party-coalition based on the number of parliamentary seats. An alternative option could be a 3-party-government together with the Greens.

Another party missed very tightly the 5% line. The BSW party got 4,97%. Its top candidate Sahra Wagenknecht has announced to ask for a legal verification of the election result. In her opinion the Germans living abroad did not have enough time to vote with this anticipated election.

This demand of Miss Wagenknecht is legitimate. Let’s remind that there were even irregularities with the 2021 Bundestag Election, which required a partial repetition of the election in Berlin.

The 2021 Election in Germany

This election marked the end of the long mandate of chancellor Angela Merkel (Union), who was in office for 16 years, just as Helmut Kohl (Union) in the 1980ies and 1990ies.

The SPD became the first party with 25,7%, followed by the Union with 24,2%. Olaf Scholz, who had been minister for finance in the previous government, became chancellor of a 3 parties coalition composed of the SPD, the FDP and the Green Party.

During this legislative period occured the beginning of the war between Russia and the Ukraine. Until the end of 2024, Germany provided asylum for 1,3 million Ukrainians. Germany’s financial help of 44 billion EUR for the Ukraine was used for military material, reconstruction projects and other purposes.

Chancellor Scholz continued the severe Corona management that had been initiated under chancellor Merkel. However, an attempt to install a compulsory Covid vaccination for all citizens aged 60 and older failed in the Bundestag in 2022.

One year later, the minister for health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) confirmed the existence of serious side effects of the Covid inoculations.

In 2023 Germany shut down its last nuclear reactors – a project that was initiated under chancellor Gerhad Schröder in 2002, and which was confirmed by chancellor Merkel in 2011 after the Fukushima accident.

According to Eurostat, the GDP evolution of Germany under chancellor Scholz was as follows : 1,4% in 2022, -0,3% in 2023, and -0,2% in 2024.

The 2017 Germany Election

The Union was the clear election winner with 33%, with a difference of almost 13% to the SPD.

After the election there was an unsuccessful attempt to create a 3 party coalition composed of the Union, the FDP and the Greens. This project was called a « Jamaica Coalition », because the colours of the concerned partis – black, yellow and green – remind the flag of this carribean state.

Finally, the Union and SPD formed again a « big coalition », with a parliament majority of 53,5%.

The government was led by chancellor Angela Merkel. Prominent members of it were the minister for finance Olaf Scholz (SPD), who became the new chancellor in 2021, and the minister of defence Ursula von der Leyen (CDU), who is the President of the EU Commission since 2019.

The AFD entered the federal parliament of Germany for the first time, with 12,6%.

Since march 2020, the government applied strict measures concerning the Covid phenomenon, such as lockdowns, compulsory face masks and inoculations with substances that did only have a conditional market approval by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

The 2013 Germany Election

The Union under chancellor Merkel got 41,5% with this national election in Germany. This was its best result since 1994, when it had exactly the same score.

The FDP party dropped out of the national parliament, by reaching only 4,8%. The AFD party, which participated for the first time in Bundestag elections, missed a parliament entry too, with a result of 4,7%.

Angela Merkel stayed the head of the german government, which was composed of the Union and SPD. This « big coalition » represented 67,2% of all voters.

One of the major events of this period was the migration of the years 2015 until 2017. During these three years, Germany welcomed 1,36 million asylum seekers plus 302 000 of their family members (data from the national german migration authority). A high percentage of these asylum seekers came from Syria, Afghanistan and Irak.

Germany was one of the EU countries that took the highest number of migrants, together with Sweden, Malta, Austria and Cyprus (in terms of the percentage of migrants per 1000 inhabitants).

Merkel’s migration politics is often summarized by a famous phrase she pronounced during these days :

« Wir schaffen das ! » (We will fix it ! Angela Merkel about migration in 2015.)

After 2015, there were serious problems of the interior security, caused by persons from the migrant community. A terror attack on a christmas market in Berlin in 2016 cost the lives of 13 people. Countless knife attacks – of which some were classified as terror acts – made migration a main topic even for the 2025 Bundestag election.

Angela Merkel’s phrase « Wir schaffen das ! » from 2015 got not only criticized by the « far right » AFD party, but as well by Merkel’s successor. The new CDU/ Union-leader, Friedrich Merz, announced strict measures against « illegal migration » during his 2025 electoral campaign.

(About the author of this article : Leopold Stoeger is an expert for Germany and holds a master degree in international affairs.)