After a campaign shattered by a far-right rise and the shocking return of US President Donald Trump, conservatives emerged as the clear favorites as Germans cast their ballots in a crucial election on Sunday.
In order to regain support from the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is aiming for a record outcome following a series of fatal attacks attributed to asylum seekers, frontrunner Friedrich Merz has pledged a difficult rightward turn if elected.
Merz has pledged to have a “strong voice” in Europe during a period of chaotic upheaval if he succeeds beleaguered Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the center-left SPD, as was largely anticipated given a wide polling margin.
Casting his ballot in Berlin, Daniel Hofmann, a 62-year-old urban planner, said it was his “civic duty” to vote as “right now we are going through very uncertain times”.
“There must be a change, a transformation.”
The first exit poll-based estimates are anticipated shortly after polls close at 6:00 pm (1700 GMT), and over 59 million Germans are eligible to vote.
The crucial vote in the largest economy in the EU coincides with a seismic shift in US-European relations brought on by Trump’s overt appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt the war in Ukraine.
NATO members are concerned about the alliance’s future throughout Europe, but this is especially true in Germany, which prospered under the US-led security umbrella.
At his last CDU/CSU campaign rally on Saturday in Munich, Merz stated that Europe must stand tall in order to be able to “sit at the main table” of the world powers.
Voicing strong confidence, he told supporters in a large beer hall that “we will win the elections and then the nightmare of this government will be over”.
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