BVG Strike in Berlin on February 10, 2025. The conflict at BVG coincides with the largest social cutbacks in the history of postwar Germany. During the 2025 federal election campa

In Saxony, our correspondent hears why young voters are increasingly supporting the AfD. The party is polling consistently in second place ahead of a snap election next Sunday. LO

- Election posters, showing German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, right, and CDU top candidate Friedrich Merz, stand on a meadow in Nieder-Erlenbach near Frankfurt, Germany, Feb. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Michael

An election poster of CDU top candidate for chancellor Friedrich Merz is pictured as the sun rises in Bad Homburg near Frankfurt, Germany, Thursday, Feb. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/)

CDU party leader Friedrich Merz speaks during a debate on immigration at the German parliament Bundestag in Berlin, Germany, Jan. 29, 2025. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber, File)

He has vowed to prioritize European unity and the continent’s security as it grapples with the new Trump administration and Russia’s war on Ukraine.

These include an economic malaise that has gripped the country in recent years, with its car-and-export-orientated economy looking vulnerable, as well as a thorny debate over immigration and integration that has seen the likes of the AfD rise in prominence and popularity.

Friedrich Merz's CDU party emerged as the largest party in Germany's parliament, the Bundestag, earning 28.6% of the vote.

Germany’s political system is set up to exclude extremists. Yet the country is waking up to a new political reality that has lurched to the right with the once outcast Alternative for Germany (AfD) party now firmly established in German politics.

Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats took the highest portion of a record number of votes. An ascendant far right, crumbling international order and sluggish German economy face the incoming chancellor.

The Christian Democratic Union and its allied Christian Social Union secured the largest share of votes in the German federal election, exit polls show.

Friedrich Merz's CDU won Germany's elections with 28.6 percent, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) recorded big gains.