The German elections – a view from below

by Lisa Herzog on February 23, 2025

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!

{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

1

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.

2

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.

3

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.

4

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.

5

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.

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