Turnout: 64.78%
About this election
The 2024 European Parliament election in Germany took place on 9 June 2024, electing the country's 96 MEPs. It was a difficult night for all three parties of Olaf Scholz's traffic-light coalition, which together won less than a third of the vote, and a strong one for the opposition CDU/CSU and the far-right AfD, which finished second despite a scandal-hit campaign. The newly founded left-populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) made a notable debut. For the first time, 16- and 17-year-olds were allowed to vote in a European election in Germany; turnout was 64.8%.
As in 2019, Germany elected its 96 MEPs by proportional representation with no electoral threshold, so seats closely track each party's national vote share and several small parties win representation. The CDU and CSU again ran as separate but allied lists — the CSU only in Bavaria — and are shown here combined as the CDU/CSU. The lowering of the voting age to 16 added around 1.4 million first-time young voters to the electorate.
The campaign unfolded against a backdrop of economic stagnation, the war in Ukraine, migration and farmer protests across Europe. The AfD was rocked by a series of controversies involving its lead candidate, including remarks downplaying the SS, which led the party's European group to expel it — yet its support held up, particularly in the east. The BSW, founded only months earlier by the former Left figurehead Sahra Wagenknecht, campaigned on a mix of economic leftism, scepticism of migration and opposition to arming Ukraine.
The CDU/CSU won 30.01% and 29 MEPs, comfortably first. The AfD finished second on 15.89% and 15 seats, ahead of the SPD, which fell to its worst-ever national result at 13.94% and 14. The Greens collapsed to 11.90% and 12, losing nine seats. The BSW took 6.17% and 6 seats at its first election, the FDP 5.18% and 5, while the Left slumped to 2.74% and 3. As in 2019, the absence of a threshold handed single seats to a range of small parties, from Volt to the satirical Die PARTEI.
The CDU/CSU led across the west and south, but the AfD topped the poll throughout most of the former East Germany — Brandenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern — while the Greens held only the city-states of Berlin and Hamburg. The map above shows the leading party in each state; click any state for the full breakdown. The result was an unmistakable warning sign for the governing parties ahead of the eastern state elections that autumn.
The 2024 European election deepened the crisis of the traffic-light coalition and foreshadowed its collapse later that year. The AfD's resilience and the BSW's rapid rise pointed to a fragmenting party system and a hardening east-west divide, themes that would dominate the snap federal election of February 2025.
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.