So – Germany has elected, and the results look grim: a huge shift the right, with large wins for a party, the AfD, parts of which have officially been declared anti-constitutional (but a ban does not seem on the horizon). I spent the first few hours after the polls had closed with a group of volunteer election helpers counting votes. I had registered my availability a few weeks earlier, and had gotten a letter that summoned me to appear at 7.30 on election morning in a middle school in a rather diverse neighborhood of the city in West Germany where I spend part of my life. I cycled through the empty city at dawn, we received instructions, and then we had to agree on shifts and it turned out that I wasn’t needed until 1pm. I cycled home and showed up again later.
One isn’t supposed to talk about what happens in the voting locale, but two things that struck me are so general that I can share them. The first was the discrepancy between the results – the huge shift to the right – and the happy multiculturalism that the school building in which the elections took place exuded: posters with the different countries the children came from, big “School without racism” signs, a colorful world map, slogans about respectful collaboration, etc. etc. Many school buildings in Germany are like this, and many voters will have seen these things when waiting in line to go to the voting booth. But this is exactly what the AfD rejects, and the conservative party, which had moved to the middle under Merkel, is also riding more and more on the anti-immigration wave…
The other discrepancy was after the voting locale had closed and we got to counting the votes. It’s quite a task, sorting and counting and recounting and sorting in a different way and counting again (because of Germany’s complicated voting system in which both party percentages and votes for MPs play a role). The ballot papers are quite large, and the paper is slick, so you have to be careful like hell not to let two papers stick to each other. There are eight people in the room, and members of the public can observe, everything is counted by at least two people, and for each count, you check whether the numbers add up. For minutes on end, you hear nothing but the shuffling of papers, the soft murmuring of counting voices, and the scratchings of pen on paper when results are written down. It’s a very focussed, diligent, no-nonsense kind of process, with everyone trying hard to avoid mistakes. A general cheer follows if the numbers do add up after a round of counting. In the whole country, thousands of volunteers are involved in this low-tech, high-reliability process – and yet, the outcome is an election result (with very high participation, by the way), that shows that a fifth of the electorate trust a part that wants to have nothing to do with facts, and that aligns itself with Trump’s and Musk’s post-truth strategies. God knows from what internet channels they get their news; the conspiracies about how the elections have been manipulated are already circulating there…
Now a lot depends on which of the smaller parties will make it into parliament, across the threshold of 5%. That will determine what kind of coalitions could achieve majorities. The coming weeks, probably months, will be interesting!
{ 34 comments… read them below or add one }
oldster 02.23.25 at 8:21 pm
Thanks for this report from the ground. I am glad that the results were not worse. Good luck in the coming months.
novakant 02.23.25 at 8:35 pm
Thank you for the interesting post. The part about the school buildings gives me hope. I also think that some 20% of Germans have always had an antidemocratic mindset, at least since 1990 (and before that well into the 60s), so maybe not so much has actually changed. The FDP probably not being represented in the next parliament gives me some grim sense of satisfaction.
hix 02.23.25 at 9:28 pm
There is never any line at the town hall I vote and everything in front was full of CSU posters. No SPD one anywhere on the way. While it is a CSU region, the discrepancy is usually not that large.
Trying to look at it rational – 30% of the population potentially voting for any nonsense seems to be the norm around Western Europe and ironically enough – also in the US where the share of active crazy supporters is not much larger (not trying to make a case that it is all just the election system here, the US still seems unique horrible in other ways, still it is interesting). Germany was an exception that was unlikely to last, with outright crazy parties not catching that vote entirely now and then.
It is still another thing to live through it. I’m frankly to some extent outright scared. Not because of the AFD, or the BSW, or FDP in full crazy mode, not really due to the Freie Wähler here in Bavaria. Rather, by how much the other parties moved into the same direction (except maybe die Linke, and that too only by splitting off the crazy wing). Not good for me, not good for me at all personally too. Not just shifting to right wing anti-poor, high military expenditure, anti-migrant sentiment, also regarding the relation to the truth. In that sense, maybe the real “big thing” the point where in hindsight something changed was when Söder started to claim heat pumps would cost 30000 Euro, are unaffordable for single family homes, right when AFD and Aiwangers FW were making up crazier versions of this.
hix 02.23.25 at 9:29 pm
Oh, that is not an entirely post-truthish number, even so it is quite a bit on the highest end – Söder had another 0.
John Q 02.23.25 at 11:29 pm
As Novakant and hix say, there is a 20-30 % vote available to the far right nearly everywhere. The “mainstream” right has always relied on these voters, appealing with “dog whistles”, but following neoliberal policies and being relatively open on migration. Every now and then, someone comes along who can mobilise their votes (in Australia it was Pauline Hanson in the late 1990s). The breakdown of neoliberalism has seen this far right bloc emerge more openly in most places. I tried to analyse this here, before the rise of Trump
https://crookedtimber.org/2016/02/29/the-three-party-system/
In general, the open emergence of far-right parties ought to be a manageable problem. The real disaster is in the US, where Trump, running to the right of even AfD, got a plurality of votes. I can see no way of fixing a polity where something like this can happen.
J-D 02.23.25 at 11:35 pm
Just so. It is still probably the case that a CDU-led coalition excluding the AfD but implementing (some) AfD-like policies is not as bad a thing as a government actually including the AfD, but it’s still bad.
JT 02.24.25 at 4:30 am
I offer this as an empirical, not a normative or justificatory observation: should we not possibly consider that the “posters with the different countries the children came from, big “School without racism” signs, a colorful world map, slogans about respectful collaboration, etc. etc.” were a causal factor in the outcome, rather than a “part that gives us hope?”
I don’t want this to be the case, but I fear we are burying our heads in the sand if we don’t consider this possibility.
nonrenormalizable 02.24.25 at 7:37 am
It’s interesting to hear you frame it this way as my feed of mostly liberal non-Germans has a lot of comments describing it as a rejection of the far right (by a margin of ~80-20) who have been stopped in their tracks. This also happened with Reform in last year’s UK election, though their seat numbers fell far short of being proportionate to their vote share (and of course, the whole outcome might be very different if people voted in a PR system).
On the one hand, I agree that we should not play into the hands of the far right by aggrandizing them and feeding into some narrative of the inevitability of their success. But as much as I’d like to ignore them (in say, the way the media ignores various Green parties who poll at similar levels to the far right), it seems a bit difficult to dismiss a party that doubled its previous result (in an election with the highest turnout in decades) into becoming the second-largest group in the Bundestag.
I suppose one way forward is if the more mainstream politicians take the result, but not the party, seriously, and work hard to give voters something substantial and non-reactionary to reward, rather than try to ape those who are currently ascendant.
Lisa Herzog 02.24.25 at 7:46 am
So the official results are in, and ceteris paribus it could have been worse – at least there is the chance to have a relatively stable coalition. People point to the high rate of Linke support among you voters as a sign of hope – potentially yes, but at the last elections this was Greens and Liberals, so there seems to be a lot of volatility. And in large swaths of Germany, there are hardly any voters between 18 and 24, which is probably one of the reasons for why the AfD is so strong there… I’m still deeply worried. Yes, to be sure, this is not Trump’s US, but if you look at the results in Eastern Germany, you wonder whether he would have been elected there as well. The big question will be whether the policies of the next four years will stabilize the parties in the middle of the spectrum or not.
Chris Bertram 02.24.25 at 9:31 am
The shift to the right was bad, but since we’d all been prepared by the polls to expect worse there’s some sense of relief. It is nice to say tschüss to the ghastly Wagenknecht (preferred candidate of the New Left Review).
Laban 02.24.25 at 9:36 am
“in large swaths of Germany, there are hardly any voters between 18 and 24”
What’s caused the lack of babies 20 years ago? And which are the areas with fewest babies – could they be the Green voting regions?
In the UK housing availability is a big factor now – it’s pretty much impossible to buy a family home (two or three bedrooms) in large areas of the UK unless you have wealthy parents.
It’s not the only factor though – housing was affordable here right through the 1950s-1980s yet fertility dropped.
M 02.24.25 at 10:33 am
I’m also German, also broadly located on the left, but I agree with commentator #7. It’s the inability of the left to imagine why voters might find right-wing parties attractive, and genuinely share their underlying concerns, which is a rather damaging development.
Herzog can only think of right-wing voters as “manipulated”, “post-truth”, as adherents to conspiracy theories etc.; she sees only a “happy multiculturalism” and then AfD voters must necessarily appear as detached from reality. I don’t think she’s alone in this mindset–many smart academics I have talked to buy into some similar story, where right-wing voters must be confused, irrational, manipulated, voting against their own self-interest etc.
If one thinks that, then naturally right-wing electorate success must seem like an unexplainable event of nature, or one which can only be explained by interferences from nefarious forces. It also invites people on the left to think that one need not really address the voters on the right; at most, one must help release them from the clutches of right-wing misinformation; if only this can be done, then they will return to their ‘undistorted’ natural position, some kind of left-wing view. I’m afraid that this is all just a comforting illusion and avoids the really hard questions — not even normative questions yet, but even just questions of political strategy.
Tm 02.24.25 at 11:09 am
Thanks for this post. A few observations:
Turnout was the highest in 40 years with 82%. This I think reflects otoh the anti-fascist mobilization of the last few months, which appears to have aided the resurgence of the Left Party, otoh it seems that like in the US, a certain stratum of the public has come out of the woodworks to vote for the fascists, people who haven’t voted before because they didn’t care or felt alientated from politics.
That Lindner (FDP) and Wagenknecht (BSW) are out is pure bliss. Lindner ran the government and his party into the ground for no comprehensible reason and while I’m angry at Scholz who was a mediocre to bad Chancellor, by far the main responsibility for the failure of the government rests personally with Lindner (and those in his party who supported him). Wagenknecht (who created a top-down authoritarian party in her image and whose main concerns were supporting Putin and saving the fossil fuel industry, which are also the AFD’s main concerns, and btw Wagenknecht voted with CDU, FDP and AFD to close Germany’s borders) will probably continue the talkshow circuit but hopefully we won’t have to hear from her all the time any more.
Merz ended up with the second worst result for the CDU ever (28.5%), after 2021. This is remarkable: The leader of the opposition was basically unable to benefit from the weakness and unpopularity of the government. He “won” the election only insofar as the SPD fell off a cliff. Furthermore, Merz’ extreme move to the right has clearly backfired. To compare, Merkel’s worst result was 4 points better. The question is, will anybody learn from this? The FDP also moved far right and was punished, SPD and Greens moved right and were punished.
Merz is also personally unpopular. Both CDU and SPD ran unpopular candidates and surprise, voters didn’t like it. This leaves open a bit of hope: the SPD could come back next time with better candidates. How did we deserve such an incompetent political class? This isn’t on voters to blame. Scholz, Merz, Lindner are personally weak politicians, all made obvious and dumb strategic mistakes which hurt the country, hurt their own parties, and in the end benefited the fascists.
According to surveys (https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2025-02-23-BT-DE/umfrage-aktuellethemen.shtml), 65% of voters feel that democracy and the rule of law are under threat and that Europe is threatened by Trump and Putin. 60% are greatly concerned about climate change. Yet in the election campaign, these topics were practically ignored by the media. All campaign debates between the top candidates in public television were dominated by migration and climate change was sometimes not even mentioned. Not even mentioned! Migration has been relentlessly pushed by the media as the single dominant issue of the campaign, both by the corporate media (part of which openly supported the AFD) and the public media, despite the fact that immigration has already dramatically decreased.
The corporate media clearly reflect the interests of the oligarchy, and in particular fossil fuel interests. Why the public media are going along with this agenda is more difficult to understand. In addition, Musk not only propagandistically intervened in the campaign (and the media gave him ample attention space), he also algorithmically amplified the AFD on his fascist propaganda network (https://zenodo.org/records/14880275). The AFD is a novel kind of “nationalist” party – their leader Weidel lives in Switzerland, they get their biggest donations from abroad, among their biggest supporters are a Russian dictator and a South African oligarch who immigrated to the US, their policy platform demands replacing domestic wind energy (one third of Germany’s electricity production) with imported fossil fuels (not making this up). This is the time we live in.
Reason 02.24.25 at 11:20 am
Nobody seems to have pointed out that the clear winner of the (relatively short) campaign were the Linke who came from nowhere to nearly 9%. Some of that was tactical (in my own generally Green voting family there were two votes for the Linke to strengthen the left representation in general). But it shows there is a constituency to be won for parties prepares to call for taxing the rich more and the poor less. Come on guys, why will nobody catch on – the economic positions of the right are nuts.
Tm 02.24.25 at 11:38 am
12 and 11, I see what you are getting at. But the experience is consistently that anti-immigration parties are weakest in cosmopolitan cities, and strongest in rural regions with low immigration rates, like Thuringia and Saxony. And these are also the regions with the biggest demographic challenges. In Thuringia, hospitals have raised alarm because one quarter of the doctors are immigrants – the biggest group are actually from Syria (https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/thueringen/aerzte-ausland-anzahl-mangel-mediziner-100.html) – and many are thinking about leaving. The health system would break down without these immigrants. But call me condescending for pointing this out to ignorant right wing voters whose faces may soon get eaten by leopards.
“And which are the areas with fewest babies – could they be the Green voting regions?”
What do you expect? Actually, some of the lowest fertility rates are in the East, where AFD is strongest. But fertility rates are in decline everywhere. We see that also internationally, including in the US. I suspect there is a causal connection with the rise of the far right. In many countries there are huge cultural and political gender gaps among the young generation. Many young women are disgusted by the toxic masculinity they increasingly experience and are very reluctant to have children in that situation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_German_states_by_fertility_rate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Germany#Vital_statistics
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_der_deutschen_Bundesl%C3%A4nder_nach_Bev%C3%B6lkerungsentwicklung
nonrenormalizable 02.24.25 at 12:50 pm
Re: Lisa Herzog #9:
This is also an interesting point as one of the results of the exit poll/projection that have been circulating around has been that, while the support for the AfD is more popular among older voters, younger voters show a very troubling split by gender, with the AfD receiving a lot more support from men than women (see e.g. here). And though they didn’t take the largest number of younger votes, they seem to be in second place after Die Linke. At the very least it will be interesting to see what happens to this cohort as they age.
and Re: Chris Bertram #10:
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we’d all been prepared by the polls to expect worse
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I hadn’t been following closely, but I thought the polls — with the exception of the surge for Die Linke and the drop in Green support — were fairly consistent since the election was arranged. At least, the AfD share seemed fairly level at around 20%. Although of course the issue may be that small fluctuations change what coalitions are possible and if the so-called “firewall” would have to be broken in order for a stable government to form. And good also that the FDP seem to be out.
and @M #7:
I think this kind of analysis has to be done in a case-by-case basis for the countries concerned (following the German historical school rather than the Austrian theoretical one?). From the outside, despite some admirable aspects of the German society and industry, this does seem to be an era of stagnation and declining public services. The last Euros seemed to reveal that DB is on par or worse than UK train services (though perhaps not in expense). A lot of this seems to be down to a mental block in German politics regarding the funding of public investment by borrowing.
I’m sure a lot of the post-material issues regarding immigration and integration will have shaped some voters minds. But there does seem (from the outside) to be a lot of low hanging fruit for a German government to turn things around (more so than the UK) and push away the populists, before we enter something like the unique situation of the US electorate.
Lisa Herzog 02.24.25 at 1:09 pm
My point is not that there are no legitimate grievances – really not. I could write a long post about all my complaints about what left parties haven’t done to address those. But I think there is very little reason to hope that AfD would respond to the legitimate grievances, rather than blame everything on migrants – rather than improve the integration of migrants into the labor market, which is what the demography of many regions in Germany would urgently need. In this regard, I do think that many AfD voters do not see very clearly what they are falling for (and I bite the bullet of being called all kinds of things for it).
I had mentioned the interest of young voters in the Left Party, and they had indeed campaigned with classic social justice issues, apparently with a lot of success on Tic toc. I hope they will go further in this direction and grow stronger – the SPD will go into a coalition with the conservatives and this will probably mean continuing its decline.
Why are there no young people in certain regions? I was slightly polemical, but after the “Wende” (when East Germany joined the Bundesrepublik) there was a huge outflow of young people, especially women, from the rural areas there, and a decline in birth rates (there are of course also other confounding factors, such as general urban-rural divides, but that’s what I referred to).
novakant 02.24.25 at 4:14 pm
Focussing on the grievances of far right-wing voters is the road to hell – maybe paved with good intentions, often not. Why should the grievances of these voters get even more priority than they do already in public discourse, which is strongly tilted towards amplifying extreme views?
In Germany 80% of the voters have other grievances, or similar grievances but different preferred solutions. And as TM pointed out, the 60% of voters who care about the climate weren’t heard at all in this election.
The best thing to do with the AfD is to ignore them as far as possible: they have no answers and and we certainly have enough problems to deal with that need real solutions.
Tm 02.24.25 at 4:39 pm
Regarding the material issues: there’s some evidence that in Germany, like in the US, the perception of the general economic outlook has been disconnected from people’s actual personal experience. According to a survey from February (https://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/5203/umfrage/beurteilung-der-persoenlichen-und-allgemeinen-wirtschaftssituation/), 55% rated their own economic situation good and only 7% bad. 6% rated the general economic situation good and 44% bad. This is evidence of the effect of relentless negative media reporting. Biden vibes, although Biden surely was more competent than Scholz.
“A lot of this seems to be down to a mental block in German politics regarding the funding of public investment by borrowing.”
The block isn’t just mental, it’s in the constitution (Schuldenbremse), and the CDU would not agree to changing it before the election. Now they talk about changing it.
Many economists and business leaders, as well as unionists and other interest groups, really almost everybody agrees that public investment has been terribly neglected.
hix 02.24.25 at 5:33 pm
People do not vote for AFD due to legitimate grievances, no, just no. We could in theory talk about the myriads of things that go wrong with German migration policy. Even about how say having a 80-100% migrant share among psychiatrists in training as it is the case in some big mental hospitals might not be a perfect result or things like that.
But as Lisa said – neither does the AFD offer any answers beyond Ausländer Raus, even disabled out (of any contact with mainstream society) – Gesunde schule für gesunde Deutsche and all that, nor is the problem model of AFD voters anywhere as sophisticated regarding migration. It is just oh change, bad… oh foreigners… bad… oh someone does not behave exactly like a German bad… Knife murderer criminal foreigners will kill me help! All of that has just no basis in reality.
engels 02.24.25 at 8:07 pm
I don’t have informed opinions about German politics apart from a residual enthusiasm for Frühjahr Die Linke but would I be right in thinking Wageknecht’s was the only party consistently defending the Palestinians’ right not to be annihilated?
hix 02.24.25 at 10:02 pm
You just cannot invent those things. Since Linkde and AFD together will have more than 1/3 of the votes, without one of them, the Schuldenbremse cannot be changed in the new parliament. Now suddenly CDU, FDP, Greens and SPD are on a rush to reform the debt break -making it less strict with the old majority, so they can spend more money on debt financed military expenditure. All that after FDP and CDU were opposed to any change before the elections. Under no circumstances shall they speak with the Linke which might demand some more serious reform, spending money on useful things or god forbid abolishment in exchange for joining the other parties. The reporting in public broadcasting is quite bad when it comes to die Linke – insinuating all the time die Linke would be somehow equivalent to the AFD. Both equally untouchables…..
“The last Euros seemed to reveal that DB is on par or worse than UK train services (though perhaps not in expense).”
Tricky question. Pretty sure it is not quite as bad as is the perceived consensus these days. The Deutschlandticket put many people that were never using trains onto the regional train network, substituting routes otherwise largely travelled by car on otherwise rather empty trains. A huge policy success overall. But then, many people are just really bad with any change – help i cannot sit alone on 4 seats – the train is overcrowded. Help i need to stand or sit on the floor (perfectly comfortable) during the worst possible rush hour on the worst day. Help, my regional train is far more unpunctual than the high speed train in Italy or Spain on a dedicated high speed route and a ticket price 20 times as high. We are more unpunctual than those disorganiced southerners! German rail does (and to some extent has to due to the population geography) supply a 3in 1 network – good high speed, good regional and good freight coverage. Uk should be fine with a worse freight network due to the ship alternative for example. France just says no to good regional train service which is less of a problem due to the centrality of a few big cities. The inefficient and limited investment policy already started with Hartz4 Schröder, long before the debt break.
Laban 02.24.25 at 10:19 pm
TM – “55% rated their own economic situation good and only 7% bad. 6% rated the general economic situation good and 44% bad. This is evidence of the effect of relentless negative media reporting.”
I don’t follow German media, but it’s quite possible for a person’s economic situation to be good yet for them to consider the general situation bad. I am quite well off but I despair for young UK people, my children included – especially as the things that made me well off have vanished from the UK economy, so my kids won’t have them.
J-D 02.25.25 at 12:22 am
If you are considering that possibility, what do you consider might be some of the appropriate options for responding to that possible situation?
If you are considering the possibility that there is a causal relationship, how do you think that causal relationship might possibly work? What might be a causal chain that could link ‘School without racism’ signs to people voting for the AfD?
J-D 02.25.25 at 12:27 am
It is possible that an absence of people in that age group is a result of a low birth rate in the corresponding period in the past, but it is also possible that it is a result of people in that age group migrating internally from those areas to other areas. Indeed, migration patterns must be a part of the explanation, since part of the explanation must be that people in that age group are not migrating into those areas.
Why is that the first possibility you ask about?
Gareth Richard Samuel Wilson 02.25.25 at 5:42 am
“School without Racism” reminded me of doing door-to-door surveys and seeing a prominent sign on the front door of a private home, saying there were no drugs on the premises. In both cases that’s what you’d hope, but you can’t help being suspicious about why the sign is necessary.
J-D 02.25.25 at 8:31 am
Sometimes in my life I have been confused, and sometimes when I have been confused I have as a result made choices that were bad for me and which I afterwards regretted. Somebody who points out to me when I am confused is probably going to be helpful; they are probably not being patronising or condescending, but even if they are they are still probably going to be helpful. Somebody who tells me I am confused when in fact I am not confused is mistaken but is probably still trying to be helpful and still probably not being patronising or condescending.
I assume all this is true of most people and perhaps even of all people. Why wouldn’t it be?
In general I don’t know how people decide how they’re going to vote, but the idea that some of them or even many of them are confused while doing so seems likely enough.
If somebody says that (some) people vote they way they do because they’re confused, that’s not at all treating the voting behaviour as unexplainable: ‘because they’re confused’ is an explanation! Also, when people are confused, it isn’t always because other people have been trying to confuse them, but sometimes it is. There’s nothing strange or unlikely about the idea of people deliberately trying to confuse voters.
Laban 02.25.25 at 10:38 am
J-D – “Why is that the first possibility you ask about?”
This is OT, but because reading Guardian comments on fertility or environmental pieces, you quite often see “it would be wrong to bring them into a world heading for catastrophe” or “there are more than enough people in the world”. It’s like watching evolution take place in real time.
Tm 02.25.25 at 12:22 pm
J-D et al, I posted some German demographic data above. Here’s a good graph of the current (2021) population structure:
https://service.destatis.de/bevoelkerungspyramide/index.html#!y=2021
The younger cohorts are clearly less populous but keep in mind that they also have lower election turnout.
You can compare this with Saxony. It’s similar but what stands out is the steeper decline in the number of births since 2016 (coincident with the rise of the AFD, interestingly). It’s hard to not conclude that this community has no future without immigration.
https://www.bevoelkerungsmonitor.sachsen.de/Pyramide_Fortschreibung/index.html#!y=2023&v=0
If you are interested, you can find data about migration here:
https://www.bevoelkerungsmonitor.sachsen.de/wanderungsgeschehen-wanderungsverhalten.html
The migration balance was negative until about 2011. Here you see migration (green) and natural change (grey) in one graph:
https://www.bevoelkerungsmonitor.sachsen.de/bevoelkerungsbestand.html#a-20446
Doug 02.25.25 at 4:07 pm
The departure of the BSW is so very satisfying. I hope that Sahra Wagenknecht, the single most contemptible person in German politics, will follow a previous holder of that title, the execrable Roland Koch, into complete political oblivion.
I hope that the FDP will find its time outside of parliament salutary. Germany could use a liberal internationalist party, but the FDP isn’t that, and hasn’t been for a while. Volt is still too niche to be a replacement.
I think that Scholz had delivered on the Zeitenwende instead of being so very scholzig about it, things might have gone differently for the SPD. I don’t know how deeply Russia-fed corruption runs in the SPD, and thus how much a role it has played in slowing assistance to Ukraine. Visibly making changes and producing results probably would have helped Scholz & Co. some; hard to say whether it would have been enough.
Germany has joined the very large parade of democratic countries that have turfed out the government that was in charge during the inflationary surge of 2022-23. Those are tough headwinds for any incumbent, and there was not enough vigor and achievement for this government to have made progress against them.
As far as population levels in rural areas, especially eastern rural areas, you can’t keep ’em down on the farm. Bismarck complained about people leaving rural areas east of the Elbe (back when a lot more of Germany was east of the Elbe) so it’s not exactly a new problem. The GDR’s solution of restricting movement is not viable in a democracy.
If I were getting paid to look at what to do about the AfD, especially in the east, I would look at Poland to find where Civic Platform made inroads against PiS. (And maybe where Fico made gains in Slovakia as a counterexample.) Germans don’t like to think that they live in a post-communist country, but they do, and ignoring that fact really hinders understanding political developments.
Anyway, I am filing these results under “could have been worse.” I don’t expect to like the Merz government, but if he delivers for Ukraine — and thus for Europe — I could be reconciled. The way he came out in the “Elefantenrunde” swinging against AfD — “you want to ditch the euro, you want to leave NATO, you want to throw away the seventy-five years of stability that we have worked to build, you want the opposite of what we want” — was at the very least a good start.
Tm 02.25.25 at 6:48 pm
“Sahra Wagenknecht, the single most contemptible person in German politics”
Hey there’s a ton of competition for that title.
engels 02.25.25 at 8:20 pm
Sahra Wagenknecht, the single most contemptible person in German politics
A truly remarkable statement; and useful to have someone state so clearly what half a dozen other commenters only implied.
This btw was recently published by NLR about their “preferred candidate”:
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/sovereign-virtues
Doug 02.25.25 at 8:35 pm
31: There is! (And it could be a fun discussion.) But who else joined the SED in the summer of 1989 and still defends that as a good idea?
John Q 02.25.25 at 10:36 pm
The only other one I dislike as much (from the other side of the world, so on very scanty evidence) is Christian Lindner. Happily, he’s out too. For once, an anti-democratic feature of the electoral system, the 5% threshold, has produced a good outcome.