Turnout: 61.38%
About this election
The 2019 European Parliament election in Germany was held on 26 May 2019, electing Germany's 96 members of the European Parliament — the largest national delegation in the EU. It produced a striking result: the governing parties of Angela Merkel's grand coalition both lost ground, while the Greens surged to their best-ever national result, leaping into second place ahead of the Social Democrats. Turnout rose sharply to 61.4%, up more than 13 points on 2014, reflecting unusually high engagement, especially among younger voters.
European elections in Germany use pure proportional representation with closed national or state lists. Uniquely, Germany has no electoral threshold for European elections: the Federal Constitutional Court struck down first a 5% and then a 3% threshold as unconstitutional, so even very small parties can win a seat with well under 1% of the vote. That is why the German delegation includes MEPs from a long tail of minor parties — satirical, single-issue and regional — alongside the major forces. The 96 seats are allocated in strict proportion to each party's national vote.
The election came amid a wave of climate activism — the school strikes inspired by Greta Thunberg were at their height — and just days after a viral video by the YouTuber Rezo attacking the CDU went massively viral. The campaign crystallised a generational and environmental realignment that had been building in German politics, and the result accelerated the decline of the SPD and fuelled a year of Green poll leads.
The CDU/CSU finished first with 28.86% and 29 MEPs, but this was a record low for the Union in a European election. The Greens doubled their support to 20.53% and 21 seats, overtaking the SPD, which collapsed to 15.82% and 16. The AfD won 10.98% and 11 seats, the Left 5.50% and 5, and the FDP 5.42% and 5. Thanks to the absence of a threshold, a string of smaller parties — including the satirical Die PARTEI, Free Voters, Volt, the animal-welfare and ecological-democratic parties — each won one or two seats.
The Union led the vote in most states, but the result exposed Germany's emerging divides. The Greens topped the poll in the big-city states of Berlin and Hamburg and in Schleswig-Holstein, reflecting their strength among urban and younger voters, while the AfD won Brandenburg and Saxony, foreshadowing its dominance in the east. The map above shows the leading party in each state; click any state for the full breakdown.
The 2019 European election was a turning point for German politics. It confirmed the fragmentation of the old two-party system, marked the high-water mark of the Greens' rise, and accelerated the SPD's search for renewal that would culminate in its narrow federal win in 2021. Across Europe, the result contributed to the Greens' strongest-ever showing in the Parliament and to the erosion of the traditional centre-left and centre-right blocs.
Die Bundeswahlleiterin (Federal Returning Officer) — official results at bundeswahlleiterin.de.
Compiled and reviewed by Bartłomiej Paruzel, Election Data Analyst, from official results. See our data methodology.