German election: exit polls show big win for right while left crumbles UPDATED | Eastern NC Now

UPDATE:  Official results:  CDU 164 seats (+12), AfD 152 seats (+69); SPD 120 seats (-86); Green 85 seats (-35); Left 64 seats (+25): CSU 44 seats (-1) South Scheawig Assn. 1 seat (-) Free Democrats totally eliminated; BSW 4,000 votes below threshold, and so won no seats

"sister parties" CDU and CSU have 208 seats combined.

ORIGINAL POST:

Exit poll numbers vary a bit but all show the right the clear winners of the German election for the Bundestag, with both the traditional conservative CDU/CSU and the populist nationalist anti-immigration right Alternativ fur Deutschland making major gains, finiishing first and second.  AfD doubled its vote share from the last election and had its best result ever.  The CDU gained about 4 points from the last election but still had its second worst result since World War II.

On the other hand, the parties of the recently collapsed left-liberal coalition took a shellacking.  The lead party of that coalition, the center-left Social Democratic Party had its worst election result since the first Kaiser Wilhelm was on the throne of Imperial Germany in 1887.  Their smallest coalition member the classic liberal Free Democrats appear to have lost over half of their vote and all of their seats.  The third coalition partner, the far left Green Party also took a significant hit.

Alice Weidel, leader of AfD has offered to join the CDU/CSU in a coalition, something polls show a majority of Germans would support.  However, the leadership of the CDU is not keen on such an alignment.  Both parties campaigned on cracking down on illegal immigration.

Final results showing exact seat counts will reveal what possible coalitions are numerically possible.  Germans vote both for single member geographical seats and for party list seats, assigned based on percentage of votes.

The  CDU focused its campaign on a crackdown on illegal immigration.  Its leader Friedrich Merz was Merkel's main rival in the party and has moved the party back to the right since Merkel left government.  While there is some chance that a grand coalition with the Social Democrats may be possible and they may surrender to CDU policy, those numbers may not work.  If it is necessary to bring in a party to the left of the Social Democrats like the Left Party or Green Party, the coalition would be unstable from the beginning and unlikely to last a full term. The Green Party is the most dogmatic on both being pro-migrant and anti-energy.  The CDU might hold a possible coalition with the AfD over the Social Demcrats head to force them to agree to CDU policies.

Another possiblitiy is a minority CDU government with outside support from AfD.  If not in government, the AfD will provide the opposition leader which will raise their profile even more.

If he does not form a coalition with AfD, Merz will be stuck with an alliance with parties that he himself has described as "green and leftwing idiots".  (apparently in Germany, if you are leader of a "mainstream" party you get to call a  political opponent an "idiot" but if an average citizen does that they get prosecuted).

https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/2025-german-election-minute-by-minute/

If not for the party list seats, this election would not have even been competitive.  For the geographical seats, AfD won all of them in the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpomperin, Thuringia, and Saxony-Anhalt, and all but one of them in the states of Saxony and Brandenburg.  The CSU, the even more conservative partner party of the CDU won all of them in Bavaria.  The CDU won all of them in Hessen, Saarland, and Bremen, all but one in Rheinland-Palatinate and Schleswig-Holstein, and heavy majorities in North Rhein - Westphalia, and Lower Saxony. A map of the results of the geographical seats can be seen here:

https://www.reuters.com/graphics/GERMANY-ELECTION/RESULTS/movaynkgova/