This weekend, German voters signaled their desire for change. Germany elected a new government headed by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a center-right party, sweeping out the center-left Social Democrats. The results put the CDU in a position to lead the formation of a new governing coalition in the Bundestag, the German parliament. Another headline from the election? The strong performance of Germanys far-right party, the Alternative fr Deutschland, or AfD. AfD had shown surprising support in preelection polls, and grabbed a lot of attention in part thanks to Elon Musks full-throated backing.Its the best showing in AfDs history but the party remains quite controversial in Germany. The new chancellor, the Christian Democrats Friedrich Merz, has already said his party would not form a coalition with AfD. Its growth over the last few years (part of a global resurgence of far-right parties) has raised alarms among Germanys mainstream parties, which see AfD as an extremist movement. There was also another surprise in this weeks results: the unexpectedly good showing of the leftist Die Linke party. Weeks before the election, there were signs the party would fall short of the 5 percent cutoff for earning seats in the Bundestag; this weekend, Die Linke won 9 percent of the vote. To make sense of it all, Today, Explaineds Noel King spoke with Nina Haase, chief political correspondent for Deutsche Welle, Germanys international broadcaster. King and Haase discussed the implications of the CDUs triumph, how to think about the AfDs and Die Linkes performance, and where German politics goes from here.Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. Theres much more in the full podcast, including an in-depth history of the right in Germany, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.There was a big election in Germany this weekend. Whats the headline here?The headline is that the conservatives swept the Social Democrats out, and we will see a new German government that is going to be led by the conservatives that is still going to be pro-European a centrist government facing lots and lots of challenges. The headline underneath is that, for the very first time in a national poll, a far-right party, the AfD, managed to get one in five German voters to vote for them.Who is the new chancellor?The new chancellor is Friedrich Merz. He entered politics in the 1990s and he was then swept out of political power by a certain Angela Merkel from his same party, then reentered politics when Angela Merkel left. He was always a fierce critic of Angela Merkels open-door policies, so hes adopted a much more hardline stance on immigration that has been one of the key issues for him in this election campaign.What were the other issues that led the conservatives to do so well this time?Germans showed a lot of desire for change, big change. The current government had started out on a liberal agenda. Then Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, so they had to make a lot of very tough decisions. The conservatives were the biggest opposition power, so they used that to their advantage to essentially say this government is overwhelmed and were going to be the ones dealing with all the desire for change. [Voters] want more clarity when it comes to immigration. They want the German economy to get going again. And these were the core topics that the conservatives focused on and won.So: immigration, the economy, Ukraine. That sounds familiar. This party that came in second, the AfD, tell me about it. Where does it come from?Theyre a fairly young party. They were founded just over 10 years ago. They started off on a platform that was EU-skeptic, that wanted to get out of the euro, the common currency that we have here in Europe. And over the years, they have radicalized. They have gone from being an economy-focused, financial policy-focused party, to being an anti-immigrant, pro-Russia, pro-China party. That is something where lots of people here in Germany are saying this would shake up the fundamental pillars of the liberal democratic system that we have in this country. They have people in their ranks that have very close ties to the Kremlin. They have a leading figure in the east who is a history teacher, but says that Germany needs to move on and stop this whining about this short period of time when this thing called the Holocaust happened, and that is, of course, something that has made a lot of alarm bells ring here in Germany, given our history, where many feel reminded of just how quickly populism can lead to real-life fascism. Having said all that, the AfD say of themselves that they are libertarian conservative. They got a big push in this election campaign from Elon Musk. Musk came out on his own platform, X, a couple of weeks ago and said that only the AFD can save Germany. He held an hour-long chat with their co-leader, Alice Weidel, and gave them a lot of visibility on his own platform. What does their second-place finish mean? How much power do they have coming in where they did?Theyre now the second strongest political group in the parliament, and that means they have certain privileges when it comes to appointing the chairpeople of the committees, for example. Traditionally the biggest opposition group (which is in this case the AfD), they lead the budget committee, so they can influence the agenda of committee meetings. The AFD also gets a lot of time to address parliament, as the second biggest group in parliament. So well hear a lot more of them. We have a system here in this country where you have a blocking minority for certain fundamental changes to our basic law. And the AfD alone cannot do that at the moment. But if, for example, the current government wanted to make fundamental changes to the constitution to allow for more spending in support of Ukraine, the AfD together with the left, Die Linke, can now block that.So you had a far-right and a far-left party do better than people expected, it sounds like?Absolutely. And that is one of the main points of criticism by the conservatives, who say that the current government under Olaf Scholz has allowed the fringes to become really quite strong. Your new chancellor, Mr. Merz, has already spoken this morning. What is he saying about working with these parties, primarily the AfD?The AfD is not going to get into government. I think that is a very important message to send, that its considered way too far right by all the other democratic parties and the conservatives have therefore ruled out collaborating with them. That is known as the firewall here, that the firewall still stands because of our countrys history. Now, the AfD are also very clear that they were aware that they wouldnt enter government, but theyre hoping for an unstable German government under Merz now in the next couple of years. And they have their eyes on 2029, when they say that their positions will become so normalized that they might then actually enter government, if not the chancellery.What do these results mean for Germany over the next year or two?The results mean that Friedrich Merz will have to enter coalition negotiations very quickly with the Social Democrats and very quickly come to a good deal with them so that he can form a stable government. He has a lot of challenges ahead of him. He warned explicitly, right after polls closed last night, that Europe needs to move fast and become independent from the United States. He questioned whether the United States would come to the defense of European NATO allies in future. He said he needs to get the government together and in a stable way so that Germany can answer and give proper solutions to all these geopolitical challenges that were facing. At the moment the feeling is that liberal democracy in Europe is under threat from Russia. Were considered to be in a hybrid war with Russia and also, increasingly, from the United Statess new administration.See More: