2025 German election polls and prediction model (original) (raw)

Forecast seats in Bundestag

316 seats needed for majority

2025 simulations

2021 result*

*Proportional to size of incoming parliament

Following the collapse of Germany’s unloved “traffic-light” government in November, Germans will elect a new parliament on February 23rd. Who will lead Europe’s biggest economy? Our election model forecasts how many seats each party might win, within a range of plausible outcomes, and presents a range of potential coalitions.

Despite his unpopularity Olaf Scholz, Germany’s chancellor, is standing again as the candidate for the Social Democrats (SPD). But he languishes far behind his main opponent, Friedrich Merz, the chancellor-candidate of the centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU). Our model gives the CDU/CSU “Union” chance of winning the most seats. It forecasts that the Union will win between seats of the 630 on offer.

Meanwhile the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is on track to double its share of MPs, buoyed by popular anger over immigration and the cost of living. The AfD’s success means the SPD faces sliding into third place for the first time since the foundation of the Bundestag in 1949. Still, all other parties rule out coalition talks with the AfD, leaving it with no viable path to governing.

Smaller parties’ seat forecasts

Seat ranges apply when the party either wins over 5% of the vote, or wins three direct mandates

Three parties sit on the cusp of the 5% voter threshold needed to enter parliament: the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), a self-styled “left-conservative” splinter party; the hard-left Die Linke (The Left); and the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), who were in government until Mr Scholz ejected them in November.

Of the three the BSW, founded just over a year ago, has the best chance of winning seats although it is still less than a coin flip. If it succeeds, The Left—from which Ms Wagenknecht split to form her party—could struggle to win any at all. Part-successor to the Communists that ruled the former East Germany, The Left missed the 5% threshold in the last election in 2021, but entered the Bundestag by securing three “direct mandates” (constituency seats), an exception to the rule. It hopes to repeat that feat this time. But it is squeezed not only by the BSW but also the AfD in its eastern German heartlands.

Our model suggests that both the FDP and The Left are more likely than not to lose all of their seats. Whether or not they do has significant consequences for the distribution of seats among the larger parties. The more parties make it into the Bundestag, the more likely it is that a three-party rather than a two-party coalition will be needed for a majority.

For those parties that do win seats, forming a coalition will not be easy. The “traffic-light”, comprising the SPD, Greens and FDP, was Germany’s first three-party national government in over 60 years—and German voters do not want a repeat of that experience. Assuming it takes the first slot, the Union will be tasked with the tricky job of finding governing partners.

Who would Mr Merz choose? Our model can forecast seat counts and mathematically viable coalitions. But it cannot estimate the likelihood that any given set of parties will reach an agreement. The AfD, for example, has chance of winning enough seats to secure a joint majority with the Union. But Mr Merz has emphasised that under his leadership the CDU/CSU will retain the Brandmauer (“firewall”) against the AfD.

Possible two-party coalitions

A more likely junior partner for the Union is the SPD. There is chance that the two parties would command a majority of seats, enabling a so-called “grand coalition” (the arrangement usually favoured by Angela Merkel during her time in charge). A Union-Green (or “black-green”) coalition, untested at federal level, would also probably have the numbers, although many in Mr Merz’s ranks—the CSU in particular—detest the Greens. The fragmentation of party support means that more coherent two-party coalitions—a centre-right pairing of the CDU/CSU and FDP, or a left-leaning SPD-Green union—are unlikely to come anywhere near a majority.

Possible three-party coalitions

Our model predicts chance that neither a grand nor a black-green pairing will hold a majority of seats. In that case, all three parties might be needed to form a government. In theory, the Union, SPD and BSW could form a “blackberry” (the parties’ colours are black, red and purple) coalition of the sort recently assembled in the state of Thuringia. But Mr Merz has ruled out working with the BSW at the federal level. Given that, and the anti-AfD firewall, Germany seems almost certain to have a Union-led government with either the SPD or Greens—or both.

Polling, voting intention, %

While German voters want to avoid another fractious three-way coalition, they are not enamoured with the two most likely alternatives, either. Almost half of respondents to a recent survey by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, a German pollster, said that another grand coalition would be “bad”. Nearly two-thirds took that view about a black-green pairing. Post-election coalition talks are likely to take two months or longer. Whatever governing arrangement emerges will have to work hard to win Germans’ affections.

The candidates

Friedrich Merz

The political home of Angela Merkel, chancellor for 16 years until 2021, Germany’s principal centre-right force is an alliance of the CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU. Often referred to as the “Union”, the CDU/CSU is miles ahead in the polls. Its joint candidate, Friedrich Merz, became the head of the CDU in his third bid for the job in 2022. After a long career in politics Mr Merz left in 2009 for a stint as a corporate lawyer and an executive at the German arm of BlackRock, an asset manager, before making a surprise return in 2018. Mr Merz would govern to Mrs Merkel’s right on migration and other issues, and take a much more hawkish line on Russia than Mr Scholz. He is more popular than his SPD rival, but struggles to appeal to women and younger voters.

Olaf Scholz

The biggest party in government, the centre-left SPD stands to lose much in this election. Should it fall behind the AfD, as polls suggest, it would be relegated to being the third-largest party in the Bundestag for the first time. Despite his unpopularity Olaf Scholz, the chancellor, has been nominated to stand again by his party.

Robert Habeck

Alliance 90/The Greens

The most powerful environmental party in the world, Germany’s Greens are struggling to recapture the exuberance of the 2021 campaign, when for a moment they harboured hopes of winning the chancellery. They will hope to get close to the 15% of votes they attracted in 2021. The Greens fight for decarbonisation, are pro-migration, want more public investment and are hawkish on Ukraine. Robert Habeck, the vice-chancellor and economy minister, is their chancellor-candidate.

Alice Weidel

Alternative for Germany (AfD)

The hard-right AfD was founded in 2013. As a party established to oppose euro-zone bail-outs, it enjoyed little success at first. But in the manner of other European populist-right parties, the AfD steadily shifted its focus to immigration, and after Germany’s migrant crisis in 2015-16 it broke through at the 2017 election. It will hope to become the second-largest party in the Bundestag, but stands no chance of joining Germany’s next government as no party will work with it.

Sahra Wagenknecht

Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW)

The BSW is named after its founder, Sahra Wagenknecht, the former co-leader of the Left, a now-dying hard-left party. In January 2024 Ms Wagenknecht quit the Left to go it alone, on an unorthodox agenda of opposing German support for Ukraine, scepticism about immigration and fierce anti-wokery. In September the BSW won large vote shares in Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony, three states in eastern Germany. Coalition talks broke down in Saxony over Ukraine policy but in Brandenburg the BSW will be the junior partner in a government led by the SPD. In Thuringia the CDU, SPD and BSW have agreed to assemble Germany’s first “blackberry” coalition.

Christian Lindner

Free Democratic Party (FDP)

Olaf Scholz’s decision to fire Christian Lindner, the head of the FDP, as his finance minister triggered the implosion of the traffic-light government. Often a junior partner to either the CDU/CSU or SPD, the pro-business FDP has both liberal and populist elements. Yet on current polling the party will fall below the 5% threshold needed to enter the Bundestag, as it did in 2013.

Heidi Reichinnek and Jan van Aken

The Left

The Left, a successor to East Germany’s Communists, is still most popular in eastern states. Yet the emergence of the BSW has left it flirting with extinction. It looks likely to struggle to reach the threshold to enter parliament.

Methodology

To forecast how many seats each of the parties will win, we generate thousands of “simulation” elections based on polling averages—the main building block of our model. We calculate these averages using the same state-of-the-art methodology as our American poll tracker, which estimates the most likely “true” voting intention for each party, taking into account the partisan leanings of different pollsters (“house effects”).

The model behind these simulations then accounts for the tendency for some parties to rise and fall together, or at others’ expense. For example, our model says that if the BSW meets the 5% threshold, the Left is less likely to do so. We estimate this based on the correlation between our polling averages in the past.

Finally, we account for the possibility that smaller parties sidestep the 5% threshold by winning three constituency seats (“direct mandates”), as the Left did at the last election, in 2021. We combine our forecasts for the nationwide election with district-level predictions by YouGov and zweitstimme.org. For each simulated election nationwide, we also simulate the likely number of districts each party could win.

For the 2021 election we combined polling averages with data on how parties had performed in previous elections, working out how much weight to place on either component. This time, the presence of a new party, the BSW, means that approach was not feasible.

Sources:

wahlrecht.de; YouGov; zweitstimme.org; The Economist