Elections in Germany "are usually dull affairs" but, as Germans head for the polls this weekend, "this time it's different", said Sky News commentator Adam Boulton.
The country's proportional voting system, and the decades-old agreement between the mainstream parties to work together to exclude the far-right, "usually means that there is not much change in Germany's political settlement". But the "emergence of a challenger party on the far right which is commanding significant levels" of voter support, risks throwing the mainstream "into turmoil".
How does the German electoral system work?
Around 61 million people aged 18 and over are eligible to vote in Germany's federal (general) elections. In a system known as "personalised proportional representation", each person gets two votes: one for a candidate to represent their constituency, and the second for a party's state list. The second vote determines the strength of each party in the Bundestag (the equivalent of the UK's House of Commons).
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Under election law, parties must obtain a minimum of 5% of second (party) votes before it can claim representation in parliament. First introduced in 1953, this law was "intended to prevent tiny splinter parties" from getting into parliament "and fragmenting it, making it hard to form a viable majority", said DW.
Turnout in the last two elections has been just over 76%, high by the standards of other European countries.
What are the key issues?
The most populous country in the EU has been contending with "a stagnating economy, a fraught immigration debate and profound angst over the fast-deteriorating transatlantic relationship under the new Trump administration", said the Financial Times.
The ruling red-yellow-green "traffic-light" coalition between the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Liberals (FDP) and the Greens – which collapsed in November, precipitating this election – has blamed the country's economic slowdown on the absence of cheap Russian gas and a shrinking export market. However, their main opponent Friedrich Merz, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU)'s candidate for chancellor, has said the key to jumpstarting Germany's economy lies in getting "bureaucracy under control".
The always fractious immigration debate has been turbocharged by several recent deadly attacks, including one at a Christmas market in Magdeburg and another last week in Munich, in which migrants have been identified as suspects. A move to cut migration dramatically – a "signature issue" for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) - has been embraced "wholeheartedly" by Merz, in response to "growing voter concerns", said Politico.
The most heated exchanges of yesterday's final four-way election TV debate were about Ukraine. AfD co-chair Alice Weidal urged her country to remain a "neutral mediator", drawing condemnation from the mainstream party leaders, with Merz saying "we are not neutral, we are not in between. We are on Ukraine's side and, together with Ukraine, we are defending the political order that we have here."
Who is ahead in the German polls?
Merz, who emerged as the winner of TV debate, according to a flash post-broadcast poll, is on track to become Germany's next chancellor, with his CDU party slated to draw just under 30% of the vote, according to Reuters' most recent poll of polls. The parties that make up the "traffic-light" coalition have seen their support plummet, with the SDP on 15%, Greens just behind on 13%, and the (always smaller) FDP on 3%
But the big story of these elections is the strong rise of the Elon Musk-endorsed AfD, which is currently polling second at just over 21%. The AfD is currently under observation by the country's domestic intelligence agency for suspected right-wing extremism, and its emergence as a serious electoral force is "acutely sensitive because of Germany's Nazi past", said Sky News' Boulton. Despite its rising popularity, a majority of voters strongly oppose the AfD: surveys have shown that "two-thirds of Germans regard it as a threat to democracy", and 40% would like the party to be banned.
The mainstream parties have for decades maintained a "firewall" designed to keep the far right out of power, and all have ruled out going into coalition with the AfD following this election. But there will be "headaches enough for the other parties if, as expected, AfD comes a strong second", said Boulton. And, if it tops the polls on Sunday, "the assumptions underpinning German politics would be in ruins".
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