AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
Early projections of election results in Germany show the center-right Christian Democrats to be in the lead with 29% of the vote, nearly 10% ahead of the far-right Alternative for Germany party. NPR Berlin - sorry, NPR Berlin correspondent Rob Schmitz is watching the returns and joins us now. Hey, Rob.
ROB SCHMITZ, BYLINE: Hey, Ayesha.
RASCOE: So German Chancellor Olaf Scholz appears to be on his way out, making way for a new chancellor. Were you surprised at all by the numbers?
SCHMITZ: No. You know, in fact, the latest polls before today's election accurately reflected the exit polls that we're seeing now. And they show the Christian Democrats and its sister party, the CSU from Bavaria, received 29% of the vote, which you mentioned, which means that the party's leader, politician and lawyer Friedrich Merz, is poised to be the next chancellor of Germany. And the AFD, which is the far-right Alternative for Germany party, came in second place with 19.6%. And then lastly, Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats, by exit polling data, came in third place with 16%, and none of this is too surprising.
RASCOE: No single party received more than half of the vote. So what will this mean for the makeup of Germany's next government?
SCHMITZ: Yeah, right. I mean, this means that Friedrich Merz will be meeting in the coming days with one or two other parties to try and form a coalition government. And it's important to mention here that it's too early to tell whether Merz's center-right party will need to govern with one other party or two. And this hinges on whether the libertarian Free Democrats, which, up to November, had been part of Olaf Scholz's three-party coalition government, were able to get enough votes to cross the 5% threshold needed to serve in Parliament.
Exit polling shows that the Free Democrats only received 4.9%. If that sticks, it could mean that the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats would have enough votes to form a two-party coalition, also known as a grand coalition in Germany. The last time these two parties governed was under Chancellor Angela Merkel.
RASCOE: So what kind of chancellor will Merz be?
SCHMITZ: So Merz is a traditional conservative who comes from a family of lawyers. He was on the board of the German branch of BlackRock, the largest asset management company in the world, and he believes in a strong, cohesive Europe that will stand up against an increasingly aggressive Russia, and he's advocating cutting Germany's stifling bureaucracy and regulatory system to make it easier on business. This morning, I spoke to voters outside my neighborhood polling site, and I spoke to voter Tobias Rasha (ph) about what Merz's priorities should be once he's chancellor. Here's what he told me.
TOBIAS RASHA: We have a war in Europe. We have problems with the economy. We have still climate issue. I expect that he is driving a stable and very strong Germany and Europe, and that will bring us together and really act like a strong player, which we are.
RASCOE: Rob, Germany's far-right Alternative for Germany party came in second place. Will they be considered as a potential governing partner for Merz?
SCHMITZ: Probably not, and that's because all of Germany's mainstream parties have vowed not to govern with this party. The AFD is a party that is under domestic surveillance due to the threat that it poses to Germany's democracy. Elon Musk is a big supporter of the party, but it's clear, with nearly 20% of the vote, the AfD will have a stronger presence in Germany's Parliament than they've ever had, and this will undoubtedly influence policymaking going forward.
RASCOE: That's NPR's Berlin correspondent Rob Schmitz. Rob, thank you so much.
SCHMITZ: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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