Germany’s mainstream conservatives, long the dominant force in the country’s politics, suffered the worst defeat in their history in the election on Sunday, faring significantly worse in every part of the country than they did in the previous election, in 2017.
Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, won just 24 percent of the vote, almost 9 percentage points below their showing four years ago. They led the voting in just two of Germany’s 16 states, Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg in the south, down from 13 states in 2017; in several states, they fell to third place.
The Social Democrats and the Green Party made the biggest gains.
