Germany will head to the polls on Sunday after an unexpectedly short election campaign marked by a fierce debate on immigration, security, and a consistently poor economic outlook.
The leader of the largest opposition party, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Friedrich Merz, looks poised to be the country’s next chancellor according to the latest polls.
With an estimated 30% of the vote to count on, Merz signalled he would be open to forming a coalition with incumbent Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) or the Greens.
Regardless of the victor, the person at the helm will face not only a changing foreign policy climate but a public at home worried about five key issues, according to a Gallup report seen by Euronews.
Germans are now more unhappy about their living standards than at any other point since the 2008 financial crisis.
The percentage of Germans who said their financial situation was improving dropped sharply from 42% in 2023 to 27% in 2024, according to Gallup. Their dissatisfaction earns them a spot among the least optimistic about their standard of living in the European Union, together with Austria and Greece.
Their poor expectations align with expert forecasts for Germany’s economy, which shrunk for the second year in a row in 2024. Germany, once an economic powerhouse, is projected to be the bloc’s weakest performer in 2025.
Politicians from across the political spectrum have risen to the occasion to propose policies that could lift Germany out of its economic slump, including cutting excessive bureaucracy and lowering high electricity prices.
Dissatisfaction with affordable housing has risen gradually for the past 15 years, with Germans evenly split being satisfied and dissatisfied with the availability of affordable housing in their local area for the first time since 2006.
Germans are not alone in Europe in becoming increasingly frustrated with a lack of affordable housing, however Gallup notes that the decline in satisfaction in Germany is particularly sharp — from 73% in 2010 to 47% in 2024.
A string of attacks in which the suspect was an immigrant has pushed immigration to the forefront of Germany’s election campaign.
Merz has attracted controversy by agreeing to work with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to introduce measures tightening migration policies through parliament. The majority of parties have, however, shifted to the right and promised tighter controls on immigration.
Their policies match the public’s outlook, with Gallup finding that Germans’ acceptance of migrants has fluctuated in recent years but fell in 2023.
Out of several major European economies, including France and Italy, Germany is the only country in which acceptance of migrants is significantly lower than it was in 2016 — a year after the government accepted thousands of asylum seekers.
