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Supporters of Friedrich Merz, the candidate of the mainstream conservative Christian Democratic Union party waiting for the closing of polling stations and the announcement of the first projections at the party headquarters in Berlin, Germany on February 23, 2025, after the German national election.
| Photo Credit: AP
Exit polls show opposition leader Friedrich Merz’s conservatives leading in Germany’s national election. They indicate that Alternative for Germany is heading for the strongest showing for a far-right party since World War II.
The exit polls for ARD and ZDF public television show Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats on track for their worst postwar result in a national parliamentary election, and expected to be in third place.
Germany is the most populous country in the 27-nation European Union and a leading member of NATO. It has been Ukraine’s biggest second-weapons supplier, after the U.S. It will be central to shaping the continent’s response to the challenges of the coming years, including the Trump administration’s confrontational foreign and trade policy.
Across Europe, NATO allies worry about the future of the alliance, nowhere more than in Germany which grew prosperous under the U.S.-led security umbrella.
Editorial: Persistent instability: On German politics
Mr. Merz, in his final campaign event in Munich on Saturday (February 22, 2025), said Europe needed to walk tall to be able to “sit at the main table” of the world powers.
Published – February 23, 2025 10:53 pm IST
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German exit polls give Merz’s conservatives lead, far right on strongest showing since WWII
