Dude does not understand how german elections work lmao. Nobody won that election, the conservatives got 28% of the vote. There will be at least a 3 party coalition and things could become pretty complicated.
I’m not usually one to agree with trump, but doubling your representation in a single election is a win. An incredibly concerning win, in this case. It bodes poorly.
Germans are very much like Americans, they like to Moralize and act like they got their shit together, and pretend like they’re all enlightened, but their people are just as fucked up as Americans sometimes.
their people are just as fucked up as Americans sometimes.
I’m tempted to respond with a picture of Nicholas Cage, but then I think about how Holocaust denial is increasing…
It’s a win for the party, but a win for the party is different from winning the election.
In the last Australian federal election, the Greens quadrupled their number of seats. It was absolutely a huge win for the Greens. But going from 0.7% of seats to 2.6% cannot mean you “won” the election. (Also…wow…that shows just how gross single winner elections are. Even with preferential voting. When a party that consistently gets over 10% of the votes is able to win less than 3% of seats and call that a huge win. Proportional systems like Germany’s MMP are amazing!)
Whether you want to say the CDU/CSU “won” the German election, IMO, depends less on how their vote changed relative to the last election, and more on whether you want to say the party that ends up selecting the Chancellor “won” an election, even if they need to go into a three party coalition. My personal take is that yes, it’s not unreasonable to say they won.
The “conservative party” is the CDU/CSU, and even though they won, they just had their second worst result since the 1950s.
thank you, this makes me feel better
While in this case, Trump clearly speaks about the party with the largest share, i.e. CxU — it would too make sense for Trump to call Afd “conservatives.” Because that’s the fun equivalence US Republicans use, as even they don’t seem to want to identify as “regressives”.
AfD (Conservatives Trump was looking for) doubled their vote, but won’t be part of government. Party with the most votes went from 23% to 28%.
Now I’m confused, afd won’t be part of the German government? Why is that?
In parliamentary democracies, the “government” is the term used for the ruling party or coalition. Even more specifically, it’s used for the Ministers. It’s a more specific term than just referring to all elected representatives sitting in the parliament (the Bundestag, in the case of Germany, or maybe the Bundestag & Bundesrat). Comparing it to the American system, “government” is somewhat analogous to the “executive”—the President and Cabinet Secretaries—except that it’s a fuzzy term and can also mean the non-ministerial members of parliament who are allied with the ministers.
So the AfD will not be a part of the Government because both the CDU/CSU and SPD have placed a cordon sanitaire around the AfD. They refuse to work with them because they view them as dangerous extremists. It would be theoretically possible for the CDU/CSU to break that cordon and form a government between just their party and the AfD, or they can form a traffic light coalition with the SPD and Green party. The latter seems more likely, given recent German political history.
Cause they can’t find common ground and form alliances with other parties, to form a majority.
At least that is how I understood it.
can you explain your reasoning here?
The context comment makes much more sense, that this is not a conservative win, and Trump is too dumb to realize that that.
Imagine that your place of work, a sizable but far from monopolistic company, suddenly finds itself with twice the clientele. You now service 20% of the market where before you serviced only 10. How might your boss describe that situation? Because mine would call it a win, with very little coaxing.
so if the situation was entirely different, with different aims, one could draw a different conclusion?
surrre.
I understand that you don’t want to panic about this, and you don’t need to. I have more than enough panic to cover for you. Gotchu, babycakes
yeah, I’ll definitely leave the unnecessary panicking to you guys. not my jam.
This cannot be said enough to Anglosphericals, even the well-informed ones sometimes don’t get it. Under proportional representation, you almost never “win” an election and that’s the point.
It’s a classic misunderstanding between two political different cultures. I remember once a German state election, I think it was Baden-Würtemberg, where the first-placed party had no friends so the parties #2 and #3 (the Greens were one) formed the government. The Anglo press just did not get it - a “the losers ganged up on the winners”! How could Germans possibly accept this travesty of democracy??! But the second and third parties agreed on more things, and between them they had far more votes! It was arguably more democratic than the outcome of a classic first-past-the-post election in Britain or the USA.
This silly obsession with winners and losers was why the Tories dominated 20th-century British politics even though Labour and the Liberals often had more support between them. It’s arguably what sunk the UK LibDems’ referendum on electoral reform under the Cameron government. And then a few years later Brexit got 51.9%, which for Brits was obviously a resounding victory so most of the the other 48.1% didn’t even complain about literally losing their EU citizenship. The winner-loser culture goes deep for Anglos but it doesn’t always serve them well.
Nah, they won. And there will probably be a Union-SPD or Union-AfD coalition.
I’ve also read that the other parties have stated that they will not form a coalition with th AfD, so Trump’s friends will not have a seat at the table.
Don’t kid yourself, the future chancellor and former blackrock executive is very well connected with the capital.
Who is the “GENTLEMAN NAMED DONALD J. TRUMP”? I know of no such person. I know who Donald J. Trump is, but he is most certainly not a “gentleman” by any definition I’m familiar with.
Unfortunately, our projected future chancellor is very similar to Trump in certain aspects, especially rhetorics and spitting bullshit, then being utterly incompetent when asked specifics.
Americans don’t know any better, tbh
We educated them wrong, as a joke
Squeaky shoe noises
Like every other narcissist, he makes good news from others all about him. He’s so insecure, he can’t be anywhere but in the spotlight.
What are the typical beliefs of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) / Christian Social Union (CSU)?
Ironically, independence from the US:
https://www.dw.com/en/german-election-friedrich-merz-urges-independence-from-us/live-71700729
I’m not German and don’t have any special insight into German politics, but until someone that knows better comes along I can at least offer that it’s Angela Merkel’s old party. Unless something has shifted drastically, it’s the Germany we’ve known for most of the past twenty years
Something has shifted quite dramatically. Under Merz, the C*U has shifted to the right, almost copying the extreme right AfD’s program in certain points, became very populist. A standstill like during the Merkel years could be a best case scenario atm.
No, the CDU didn’t shift, they put someone from a different wing in the top position. I guess the long and short of it that neither Günther or Wüst were interested in a show-off with Merz who had bees up his arse ever after Merkel quit, given that she previously ousted him from the candidacy position. They’re both perfectly comfortable ruling their respective states, why bother, if Merz goes too far for their liking they’re still in a position to but brakes on that.
Like, the CDU polls at around 40% in SH state elections, while the federal result is 27.6%. Everyone knows the CDU left wing has more pull than the right, they’re letting Merz be Merz.
True, but Merz is far More right than Merkel was, especially, when speaking of women and immigrants.
Also Merkel got a lot more percent oft the public vote (that counts here - wie do not habe the winner takes it all). Merz got the second worst result of his Party in history and will need to make a coalition with maybe even 2 other parties.
Merz re-iterating the “no AfD coalition” statement has reassured me somewhat. If they need two other parties that’s probably even better, because it doesn’t seem like any of the other major players would tolerate being in an AfD coalition
Uhh… it’s he president of Germany, now, too? /s, obvi
