Report Launch & Briefing - The Centre's Last Chance? Lessons from the 2025 German Elections

The parties of the traffic light coalition, primarily SPD and FDP, were harshly punished by the electorate. The CDU/CSU emerged as the largest force, though it also recorded its second worst result in its electoral history. While the parties of the centre saw their vote share fall, the far-right AfD doubled its vote share, to some extent through mobilising non-voters. Additionally, the democratic socialist Die Linke also more than exceeded expectations, increasingly their vote share among women and young people.

Why did the SPD perform so poorly? How was the Left able to mount such an impressive comeback? What will the AfD’s success mean for German politics in the coming years? Is this parliament, as Friedrich Merz put it, the last chance for the centre?

Along with the UCL Policy Lab the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung UK office organised this briefing event in Parliament while launching a special rapid-response report examining the election results and its implications for progressives in the UK and beyond.

To read the report, click here.