Elections & support
Following, momentum and strongholds
Election results are real votes; polling is a snapshot with sampling uncertainty. Geography also changes by election type, candidate and turnout.
2025 federal election — final result
Election held . Second votes determine party representation. Seats below are the election result, not a later parliamentary group count.
82.5% turnout · 49,928,653 voters · 49,649,512 valid second votes
CDU and CSU are combined from raw votes. “Other parties” groups the remaining result rows; the detailed table lists all 29 parties.
| Party | Second votes | Share | Seats won |
|---|---|---|---|
| CDU | 11,196,374 | 22.6% | 164 |
| AfD | 10,328,780 | 20.8% | 152 |
| SPD | 8,149,124 | 16.4% | 120 |
| GRÜNE | 5,762,380 | 11.6% | 85 |
| Die Linke | 4,356,532 | 8.8% | 64 |
| CSU | 2,964,028 | 6.0% | 44 |
| BSW | 2,472,947 | 4.981% | 0 |
| FDP | 2,148,757 | 4.3% | 0 |
| FREIE WÄHLER | 769,279 | 1.5% | 0 |
| Tierschutzpartei | 482,201 | 1.0% | 0 |
| Volt | 355,262 | 0.7% | 0 |
| Die PARTEI | 242,741 | 0.5% | 0 |
| dieBasis | 85,373 | 0.2% | 0 |
| BÜNDNIS DEUTSCHLAND | 76,372 | 0.2% | 0 |
| SSW | 76,138 | 0.2% | 1 |
| ÖDP | 49,764 | 0.1% | 0 |
| Team Todenhöfer | 24,553 | 0.0% | 0 |
| 21,388 | 0.0% | 0 | |
| MLPD | 19,551 | 0.0% | 0 |
| PdH | 14,294 | 0.0% | 0 |
| PIRATEN | 13,800 | 0.0% | 0 |
| BP | 12,278 | 0.0% | 0 |
| Bündnis C | 11,768 | 0.0% | 0 |
| MERA25 | 6,994 | 0.0% | 0 |
| WerteUnion | 6,736 | 0.0% | 0 |
| MENSCHLICHE WELT | 694 | 0.0% | 0 |
| BüSo | 676 | 0.0% | 0 |
| SGP | 425 | 0.0% | 0 |
| Verjüngungsforschung | 303 | 0.0% | 0 |
CDU/CSU combined: 28.5% of second votes and 208 seats. The combined share is calculated from raw votes, not by adding rounded percentages.
ARD DeutschlandTrend — 3 Sep 2026
Where the parties tend to be strongest
AfD: its clearest regional stronghold; support is more than twice its western potential according to bpb.[19]Die Linke: still overperforms in the East and Berlin, though its renewed youth/urban support is increasingly western too.[23]BSW: built its first major state-election base in Thuringia, Brandenburg and Saxony.
CSU: Bavaria only, especially Old Bavaria, Swabia and Catholic Franconia.[9]CDU: strong in many southern/western Länder (outside Bavaria). FDP: historically stronger in prosperous southern/metro regions.[26]
SPD: classic base in industrial NRW/Ruhr plus important northern and city-state strength; historically the party of organised labour.[12]CDU: also deeply rooted across NRW and the West, especially among older/Christian voters.[8]
Greens: strongest in urban western university centres such as Freiburg, Stuttgart, Bonn and Darmstadt.[15]Die Linke: especially strong in several Berlin constituencies in 2025. FDP: affluent metro belts around Frankfurt, Stuttgart and Munich rather than inner-city progressive cores.[26]
Who actually voted for whom in 2025?
Older electorate
SPD and CDU/CSU had the oldest voter profiles. Roughly one-third of SPD voters and a similar share of CDU voters were 70+, far above the electorate-wide age composition.
Younger electorate
Die Linke had by far the youngest profile: its 18–24 and 25–34 shares were unusually large, helping explain its urban and university-city strength.
Working-age middle
AfD was especially concentrated among 35–59-year-olds and remained much less elderly than SPD/CDU. This sits alongside its pronounced eastern and rural/small-city strength.
Urban professional profile
Greens skewed toward 25–59-year-olds and are strongest in large cities and university centres. FDP also leans toward working-age voters, but geographically toward prosperous metro belts.
The official representative statistics cover age and gender, not every demographic characteristic. Claims about education, religion, income and geography therefore come from the bpb electorate profiles cited in the party cards rather than being inferred from this dataset.
20 years of federal vote change
Each bar is proportional to the official second-vote share. FDP and CSU are omitted here to keep the comparison readable; their longer-term volatility and regional role are described in their party profiles.