Germany has voted. A CDU/CSU-SPD-coalition should now govern sensibly, otherwise the country will have a female chancellor again in four years' time, and her name will be Alice Weidel.
This article is provided to you free of charge. If you want to support our team, subscribe now.
The elections in Germany turned out surprisingly unsurprisingly, exactly as expected and exactly as the opinion research institutes had predicted: Friedrich Merz wins, Olaf Scholz loses, the Greens get away with a black eye, the Left celebrates a brilliant comeback, but the real winner of the election is unfortunately, unfortunately the so-called Alternative for Germany, which has taken over the entire East – Dark Germany – which is now almost completely AfD-blue.
The only thing that was not quite so clear in the run-up to the elections was whether the Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) would make it into the Bundestag, which is not the case.
The fact that the FDP is now history and the German parliament has to make do without liberals, who are now going into extra-parliamentary opposition, is somehow tragic, no matter what you think of Christian Lindner; the fact that the ego machine Sahra Wagenknecht and her troupe are not there is rather less so.
It was also not necessarily to be expected that all three men who led the "traffic light" coalition would now be gone (Olaf Scholz and Christian Lindner) or no longer play a role (Robert Habeck).
Friedrich Merz will definitely become chancellor. But although he won the elections, he still can't feel like a real winner. His party remains below 30 per cent, its second-worst result in over 70 years, while its sister party, Markus Söder's CSU, has remained below the coveted 40 per cent mark.
Continue reading for free
Get access to this article by subscribing to our newsletter that is sent twice a week. You also have to have a Journal account.
Already have an account?
Log in
