Who is ahead in the polls?

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.

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, wants to stand again, but some in his party would prefer Boris Pistorius, the defence minister and Germany’s most popular politician. Mr Pistorius has so far denied having any ambitions for the top job.

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. Now polling at around a tenth of the vote, they will do well 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.

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.

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 are proceeding well in Brandenburg. In Thuringia the CDU, SPD and BSW have agreed to assemble Germany’s first “blackberry” coalition.

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.

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.