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Exit polls show opposition conservatives win German election - Conservative chief Friedrich Merz on track to become chancellor
- Far-right AfD scores historic result
- Coalition talks could last months leaving vacuum at heart of EU
BERLIN, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Germany’s opposition conservatives won the national election on Sunday, putting leader Friedrich Merz on track to be the next chancellor while the far-right Alternative for Germany came in second on its best ever result, projected results showed.
Following a campaign roiled by a series of violent attacks, and interventions by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration, the conservative CDU/CSU bloc won 28.7% of the vote, followed by the AfD with 19.8%, the projection published by ZDF public broadcaster showed.
“Tonight we will celebrate, and from tomorrow we start working. … The world out there is not waiting for us,” Merz, 69, told supporters.
Merz is heading into what are likely to be lengthy coalition talks without a strong negotiating hand. While his CDU/CSU emerged as the largest bloc, it scored its second worst post-war result.
It remains unclear whether Merz will need one or two partners to form a majority. A three-way coalition would likely be much more unwieldy, hampering Germany’s ability to show clear leadership.
All of the mainstream parties have ruled out working with the AfD.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) tumbled to their worst result since World War Two, with 16.4% of the vote share, according to the ZDF projection, while the Greens were on 12.3% and the far left Die Linke party on 8.9% of the vote.
The pro-market Free Democrats (FDP) and newcomer Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) party hovered around the 5% threshold to enter parliament.
Context for the non-Germans: The CDU has led our government for 16 out of the last 20 years. The CDU leading is not a significant shift. But the pressure that’s being put on by the AfD is certainly an issue.
God dammit Germany
Cdu/csu are “conservatives” but also a whole lot of other things and nothing like the GOP. Afd surge is sad but not as bad as many feared.
The fact that AfD is progressing is what I’m mostly concerned about.
Merkel seemed rational.
It’s way too early to put on a tin foil hat — and I know nothing about the German election to base this on — but given Trump’s comments about Musk potentially helping him commit voter fraud in the USA, paired with Elon’s constant meddling in Germany lately, is it too far to suggest that there may be enough evidence to consider that Elon may have meddled in the German election?
I see a lot of people blaming Americans for voting in a fascist, and sure, a lot definitely did; but enough doubt has been sewn for me that I’m not even certain that they did vote Donald Trump in
German constitutional court ruled against any form of voting machine. It’s all counted by hand. Multiple times.
That’s not really a conspiracy theory. It’s a pretty open, two pronged attack from both Russia and United States.
The former does its regular disinformation spam constantly. As for the US recently we had:- JD Vance attacking European democracies for “being against free speech” (during a freaking security conference).
- … and during CPAC.
- Twitter and Meta approving propaganda ads.
- Twitter (and TikTok) serving right-wing biased feeds to their German users.
And much much more.
If we’re talking about Musk specifically he:
- Took part in AFD’s campaign meeting.
- Kept boosting AFD on Twitter before elections.
- Had multiple comments attacking democratic parties and saying that AFD should be the ones ruling Germany etc.
Neither side is even pretending they’re aren’t trying to upend democracies and replace them with far-right autocracies.
I at least have little trouble believing it. People did not vote for Trump the first time so much as against Hillary Clinton, and the debates and such this time likewise made Kamala Harris out to be a poor candidate next to him who, if not personally, then at least via delegation would really “clean up” all the stuff that is wrong in the USA.
I mean to say: we all (here + most of the media seems complicit in this as well) fell asleep far too readily. We IGNORED the desires and plight of the rural people, even being aware of the electoral college, yet we did next to zero about communicating to them whatever it was that was even being done on their behalf. Example: encouraging people with testosterone (isn’t that considered a performance enhancing hormone?) to compete against people without, citing that being the most “fair” treatment possible (I don’t care here what actual gender they are - I’m talking strictly performance hormones here). Another example: across the Fediverse we kept saying how bOtH sIdEs SaMe, meaning NOT that, and surely the other side would see that? Except meanwhile they didn’t seem to care about the issue all that much, in comparison to e.g. grocery prices and “moral corruption” in the government.
Like a failed friendship, we ignored what the other side wanted. And now, we should not be so shocked that it is over. We could have listened but… oh well. We preferred our echo chambers and enragement-baiting clickbait media (the “correct” sources of news) to engaging in that basic human activity.
You can leave off your tinfoil hat; the surveys (by many different organisations) predicted this result fairly accurately.
Appreciate it. I wish it was a tin-foil conspiracy; the reality is much more grim. We want this, apparently.
20% AfD is bad ofc, but also still puts them nowhere near power, even if the media hypes them up for clicks.
Awesome -_-
Let’s just get ww3 going already. Hopefully the nukes wipe out humanity. We have no right to exist
Don’t get too caught up in thinking about desserts (who deserves what, in the moral sense). That path can lead to a downward spiral.
Instead try to focus on some positive things that you can do to change your life (or the lives of people around you) for the better. You will feel much better that way.
You can go, we aren’t going anywhere.
Speak for yourself
