The European elections have turned into a national mid-term election. It reflects dissatisfaction with the current policies of the German government and economic pessimism. Accordingly, the coalition parties are the losers of the election. The SPD, with its worst result in a national election, and the Greens lost 8.6 percentage points compared to their very successful result in the European elections in 2019. They thus recorded the biggest losses of all parties.
The clear winner of the election is the CDU/CSU, which is by far the strongest political force with 30 percent. The AfD follows in second place with 15.9 percent. The BSW, which was founded in January 2024, achieved 6.2 percent from a standing start with a heterogeneous voter alliance. For supporters of BSW and AfD, protest motives are of secondary importance. There are similarities in terms of content between the two electorates when it comes to criticism of German support for Ukraine and concerns that certain opinions are marginalized in Germany. These positions are not shared by all other supporters. One of the special features of European elections is the performance of smaller parties. Since 2014, there has been no threshold clause in the electoral law for European elections.
The election analysis for the European Election 2024 can be found here.
All graphs and tables on which the election analysis is based can be found in the appendix.
The full-length publication is only available in German.
