The good news is that there will be no socialist government in Germany after Sunday’s elections narrowly defeated that outcome. Germany elected the second-largest parliament in the world (after the People’s Congress in China) with 735 representatives. The three left-wing parties, the SPD (Social Democrats), Greens (left-wing environmentalist party), and radical leftist Die Linke (the former East German Communist Party), got a combined 363 seats, but they would have needed 368 to form a government.
The two biggest left-wing parties, the SPD (25.7%, up 5.2 percentage points from 2017) and the Greens (14.8%, up 5.9 percentage points from 2017), made significant gains, but the far-left party Die Linke lost 4.3 percentage points, coming in at 4.9%. Since there is a rule in Germany that a party needs at least 5% to enter the Bundestag (the German equivalent to the House of Representatives), the extreme left almost missed out entirely. However, there is a special rule that a party can still get into the Bundestag if it wins three direct mandates, which means that Die Linke has just scraped into the German parliament.
The CDU/CSU used to be Germany’s conservative party, but it has moved in a moderately left-wing direction under Angela Merkel; it lost 8.9 percentage points to come in at 24.1%. This is nothing short of a disaster — the worst result the party has ever achieved in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany. The right-wing AfD, which first entered the Bundestag four years ago, managed to get back into parliament with 10.3% of the vote but was down 2.3 percentage points on its 2017 result. The pro-market FDP came in at 11.5%, which represents a gain of 0.8 percentage points.
At this point in time, it is not clear who will be Germany’s next chancellor and Angela Merkel’s successor. Given the election results, it is possible that the current coalition government of the CDU/CSU and SPD could stay in office, but this is considered unlikely.
German political commentators have coined names for the most likely coalitions, which include a “Jamaica” coalition of the CDU/CSU, Greens, and FDP (the three parties have the same colors as the Jamaican flag) or the green-yellow-red “traffic light” coalition of the SPD, the Greens, and the FDP.
In a Jamaica coalition, Armin Laschet of the CDU/CSU would be chancellor; in a traffic light coalition, the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz of the SPD, the current finance minister, would take the highest political office in the land. So, the eventual outcome depends almost entirely on what the free-market FDP and the left-wing environmental party the Greens decide.
Although a left-wing government was averted, it is clear that Germany is drifting further to the left: The left-wing parties (with the exception of the ex-communists) increased their share of the vote. Above all, 50 “Young Socialists” will be taking up seats in the German Bundestag for the SPD, all of whom are closely aligned with the SPD left-winger Kevin Kuhnert. In the past, Kuhnert has spoken out in favor of nationalizing companies such as BMW and declared that only the state should be allowed to manage rental apartments.
At the same time as federal elections, state elections were also held in the capital, Berlin. The three left-wing parties, the SPD, the Greens, and Die Linke, have already been governing in Berlin for the last four years and won a combined 54.3% of the vote. Last year, the three parties passed a law that forced landlords in Berlin to reduce apartment rents and banned rent increases for the next five years. However, the legislation was declared unconstitutional by Germany’s highest court.
Now, the anti-capitalists have made another attempt, this time via a referendum. On Sunday, voters in Berlin were asked to decide whether housing companies with more than 3,000 apartments should be nationalized. The result: 56.4% of Berliners voted in favor of expropriating large housing companies. Berlin’s Green Party and Die Linke had registered their support for the expropriation referendum. It is still unclear whether the referendum proposal will actually be enacted in law and, if so, whether any new legislation will stand up in court in the face of the many expected legal challenges.
Alongside the relief that a socialist government has been averted on a national level, there are still concerns that the right to own property in Germany is no longer respected. In fact, overseas investors already refer to Berlin as “Little Venezuela.”
Rainer Zitelmann is a historian and sociologist and the author of the book The Rich in Public Opinion.
