In 2005, the Social Democratic Social gathering of Germany (SPD) received the state elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, conserving Gerhard Schröder in energy till 2010, when Merkel grew to become chancellor.

The 2006 common elections resulted within the SPD profitable a plurality of seats, however they fell far in need of the 308 wanted for a majority, resulting in the formation of a site visitors gentle coalition with the FDP and Greens.

In addition they noticed the primary electoral participation of the Patriots for Germany (PfD) occasion, a far-right motion based by small businessman and anti-immigration activist Franz Albrecht, who was born in 1972 in Dresden in the course of the GDR period. In 2003, Albrecht based the PfD as a political strain group, which two years later developed into a celebration. The PdD contested the 2006 common election, on a platform of "much less paperwork, much less immigration, and extra sovereignty", promising to implement a points-based immigration system, minimize crimson tape for small companies, and scale back Germany's EU contributions till abolishing it altogether.

On 5 October 2006, the PfD received 354,222 votes, or 0.76% of party-list votes, in comparison with a mere 62,080, or 0.14%, of constituency votes. With its populist and anti-immigration message, the occasion did finest within the former East Germany, profitable 1.8% of the vote in Saxony and 1.4% in Saxony-Anhalt. Though the PfD received no seats, this outcome made it Germany's sixth-largest political occasion, and it will later win seats within the 2010 and 2014 common elections earlier than rising to energy in 2016.