I'm putting any posts on the upcoming German snap elections on this existing thread, because it already contains basic explanations of local politics above. Today, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier officially dissolved the Bundestag following the failed vote of confidence for Chancellor Olaf Scholz on 16 December. Even before that, parties had agreed on elections to be held on 23rd February after the ruling "traffic light" coalition of center-left Social Democrats (SPD, party color red), progressive Greens and classically liberal Free Democrats (FDP, yellow) failed on 6 November. Everything after that was just constitutional formalities.

The breakup surprised me - though it had been coming for a year, after a ruling by the Constitutional Court that you cannot just re-allocate extra funds outside the regular national budget to another purpose to circumvent the constitutional debt cap brought the differences between the fiscally conservative FDP and the two bigger left-wing parties in the coalition to a head. Still, my expectation was that like so many squabbling coalition governments before, they would hold it together until the regular end of the term next fall. Not least because the members of the Bundestag tend to cling to their seats if uncertain of re-election under present circumstances; and one of the "traffic light" reforms was capping the size of parliament at 630 after it had ballooned in recent terms under previous election law.

While no SPD chancellor has ever made it to the regular end of a second term, this is actually the first time after WWII that a German government broke up in its first one. The Liberals had been particularly unhappy with their dwindling approval rates within the government, and most observers agree that FDP head and finance minister Christian Lindner had been trying to give cause for divorce with unacceptable demands to the other partners for months. He was allegedly still surprised when Chancellor Scholz took the initiative and fired him on 6 November. There was some partisan debate on whose "fault" the breakup was, with leftwingers seizing on a "D-Day" paper containing a detailed plan for the split emerging from the FDP afterwards.

But in the end most everyone was just glad that the mismatched coalition with all its infighting in the most unpopular government of recent, if not all, times, had come to an end and there was the chance for a fresh start with all the looming crises. Developments are pretty well-told with the auto-updating aggregate poll depiction from Wikipedia:



The Greens were early winners in the competition for popular approval among the three coalition partners at the expense of the other two. Part of that was probably the sympathetic relatable public persona of Green vice chancellor and minister of the economy Robert Habeck, and that climate protection was a dominating topic in political discourse at the time. Of course public opinion soured on that when climate activists went to action forms felt to be disproportionate, like glueing themselves to streets blocking everday traffic; and sympathy for Habeck also took a hit after a badly-written and -communicated draft mandate for new environmentally friendly private heating, and a squishy stance on extending operation of the last three nuclear power plants when energy prices spiked after the outbreak of the Ukraine war and stop of Russian natural gas deliveries.

At that point the Greens went into a tailspin, with the right-wing AfD profiting most. Under previous governments, it used to be that Greens and AfD rose and fell largely in unison, as they represent pretty much the poles in the contemporary political spectrum; the more polarized debate became, the better those poles did. With the entry of the Greens into government, the mechanism of government vs. opposition worked against them and for the AfD though. The latter seized on dissatisfaction across the board, from domestic progressive politics to immigration to demanding "peace with Russia" and bringing back cheap Russian gas imports to get energy prices down and improve the ailing economy.

By early 2024 they had pretty much exploited their voter potential in polls with up to 24 percent; then their strategy of ever more radical statements to get attention backfired. A lot of that was a rather exaggerated investigative report about a "clandestine" meeting of some AfD members and other rightwingers at a Potsdam lakeside which discussed "re-migrating" immigrants - allegedly including German citizens - which was pretty much billed as "Wannsee Conference 2.0". There were more substantial affairs, too, like around the guy they made top candidate for the EU Parliament elections despite warnings from within the party about his pro-Chinese sympathies etc., then promptly had an aide of his arrested as as Chinese spy, gave an interview to an Italian newspaper saying he would never broadbrush SS members as criminals, and similar.

That resulted in a public backlash both in Germany and among fellow European rightwingers, with Marine Le Pen having them thrown out of the common group in the EU parliament, and costing them a third of their polling support. Much of that was snapped up by the emerging Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) which is pursueing much of the same anti-progressive politics, but under a nominal left-wing banner. Their recent successes in East German state elections have been chronicled upthread, and by now they are in a coalition government with the Social Democrats in Brandenburg, and with both the latter and the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) in Thuringia, while an attempt at the same in Saxony failed over the previously noted disagreements on non-state issues like support for Ukraine and the basing of US medium-range missiles in West Germany.

Quarreling over that both with other and within the own party have since cost them some voter sympathy. Thuringia was a particularly egregious example, with the national leadership around founder Sahra Wagenknecht telling the local chapter that their negotiating results were not good enough, and even admitting new party members promoting the national line to the state chapter over the local's heads. Such centralism also caused problems in Hamburg, where two competing BSW chapters now exist - one established locally by party rebels, and one installed by national leadership. A similar situation has cost the AfD admission to elections in Bremen before, after infighting resulted in two competing lists of candidates being filed with the local election board.

Anyway, with campaigning now having gone on for weeks in all but name even before the election date became official today, we're seeing the typical effect of poll numbers on a converging path. AfD and SPD have been recovering, and so have the Greens and BSW more recently. Meanwhile CDU/CSU remain firmly in lead, and it is generally being expected that their candidate Friedrich Merz will be the next chancellor; though which partner he will chose for a coalition that will almost certainly become necessary again remains to be seen. Realistic pretenders are SPD and Greens, both of which are however tainted to conservative Christian Democrats by their association with the outgoing government. If given the choice, they would definitely prefer the traditional partnership with the Liberals. But it's not sure those will even make the five-percent threshold to enter parliament again, much less provide enough seats for a majority.

To Americans, there might be slight memories of their own recent campaigns: a center-left incumbent who even some in his own party doubt will make it again, and suggested they go with another candidate - namely defense minister Boris Pistorius, currently Germany's most popular politician, who however declined after a couple days of meaningful silence; and a challenger who is prone to statements of an endearing mix between machismo and megalomania, like "I'll give Putin 24 hours to stop the war in Ukraine, else I'll supply Taurus cruise missiles to the latter and allow them to be fired into Russia" in a recent interview (then later denying he gave Putin an ultimatum).

In fact none of the four candidates named by parties with any chances - Olaf Scholz for the SPD, Friedrich Merz for CDU/CSU, Robert Habeck for the Greens and Alice Weidel for the AfD - are particularly popular, all stuck in a cluster of 22 to 28 percent of public approval. Realistically, the race is going to be between Scholz and Merz, and while the latter's party leads, he has acknowledged that Scholz' SPD may jump back to the 20s during the campaign. After all, the previous election was supposed to be decided between CDU and Greens; but then both candidates messed up their campaigns, and Scholz emerged as the winning third. Plus as always in the fragmented multi-party system of today, victory will ultimately go to the one who manages to build a coalition with a Bundestag majority.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BansheeOne,

I find it interesting to see some of the complexities the rest of the world goes through over governance.
A look at history, much of it relatively recent, shows how complex these things are when you have to consider the consequences.
Here in the US, we’ve been living in relatively safe places. We have large oceans on both sides that provide existential protection, and no truly dangerous neighbors.
We’re mostly protected by geography from our own poor decisions.

^^^^^

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
Still, my expectation was that like so many squabbling coalition governments before, they would hold it together until the regular end of the term next fall. Not least because the members of the Bundestag tend to cling to their seats if uncertain of re-election under present circumstances; and one of the "traffic light" reforms was capping the size of parliament at 630 after it had ballooned in recent terms under previous election law.

Expansion on that. First projection of the year for district results by election.de, 50 days ahead of the elections. Mind that this has no direct relation to the eventual make-up of the Bundestag, as under the German two-votes-system it's actually the "secondary" vote for party lists, not the "primary" one for district candidates, which decides seat distribution. The basic principle is that the "secondary" votes are counted at state level to see how many seats of the total each party in each state gets. Candidates who win a plurality in their district on "primary" vote are assigned theirs first. The balance of seats is filled with candidates from the respective party's state list who haven't won a district directly, in descending order.



By law, the Bundestag has twice as many seats as there are districts, so in theory half of them are filled with directly-elected candidates, the rest with list candidates, so that the distribution ultimately represents the popular vote. This worked very well in old West Germany with two big and one, later two, smaller parties. CDU/CSU and SPD decided the district races between themselves, while the liberal FDP and later the Greens also had a shot at representation as long as they cleared the national five-percent threshold in the popular vote. The only quirk that might occurr was a party winning more districts in a state directly than seats provided for them by the secondary vote, leading to "overhang mandates". Unlike in some state parliaments, those extra seats were not balanced by additional ones for other parties to maintain distribution by popular vote.

With a fifth (post-communist) party in united Germany and the two big ones less clear ahead in the popular vote, this quirk became more regular and bigger to the point is really skewed election results. This particularly benefited the center-right CDU/CSU; in 2009, they gained 24 extra seats over the regular total of 598. After that, balancing seats were introduced, which however made the size of parliament balloon. In 2013, there were 29 additional seats to balance four overhang mandates for CDU/CSU. With the emergence of a sixth party (AfD), the effect accelerated; in 2017 there were 46 overhang and 65 balancing seats, in 2021 34 and 104 respectively, bringing total size to 735.

Everyone agreed something should be done against that, but obviously not to the detriment of their party. CDU/CSU, due to their structural benefit from overhang mandates, mostly wanted to cap the number of balancing seats. In the end, the current SPD-Green-FDP coalition decided for a slight increase of districts and regular seat number (now 630 instead of 598) while controversally abolishing overhang mandates completely. IOW, if a party now wins more districts in a state directly than provided for them by the secondary vote, the candidates with the lowest pluralities are SOL if they're not entering parliament via the state list. At which point you can of course ask why not to go to a straight single-vote system.

Obviously the opposition complained to the Constitutional Court, which however upheld this new rule. OTOH, it struck down another which would have done away with the exemption that a party which wins at least three districts directly nationally will enter parliament with all the seats provided to them by the secondary vote, even if they miss the five-percent threshold. The complainants here were an unusual alliance of the Bavarian conservative CSU, which runs only in that state and may not always make the national threshold, though they typically win all the districts in Bavaria directly; and the ailing Left Party, which can still hope to win three districts in East Berlin and Leipzig.

The election.de district map shows the 22 direct mandates which will likely pull the short straw under the new law by current projections as red dots: 11 of the CDU, nine for the AfD, and two for the Left - the latter because the party is currently projected to win just those two, thus not triggering the exemption while polling consistently below the five-percent threshold. Under the old law, they would have gotten at least those two seats, and I wonder if the Constitutional Court considered this particular case in its ruling, where a party is not represented in the Bundestag though two of their candidates were directly elected. Of course with seven weeks to go, we're still dealing in hypotheticals here, but it might very well happen, possibly resulting in a new complaint.

Has Hamberg/Bremen-area always been a SPD or, far-left stronghold?

I’m honestly surprised that AfD wasn’t banned yet ahead of the elections.

Very interesting to see on that map how the popularity of that party breaks out roughly to the old East Germany!

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:
Has Hamberg/Bremen-area always been a SPD or, far-left stronghold?

I have lived in that area on and off over 40 years and all I can say is yes.

Generally, the principle that cities tend to be more left-wing and rural areas more conservative applies. The city and state of Bremen has consistently been ruled by Social Democrats since WW II, currently in a coalition with the Greens and the Left Party, the last state government the latter remains part of. Hamburg has had four CDU mayors out of 15, (West) Berlin six out of 17 (currently in a grand coalition with the SPD). Even Munich, in the middle of consistently CSU-ruled Bavaria, has had just two conservative mayors out of eight.

For the strength of the AfD in East Germany, see some of the earlier posts how they succeeded the Left Party as the party of Eastern identity by playing on anti-Western feelings remaining from the reunification process when the incompetitive socialist economy crashed, warm and fuzzy memories of social security and orderly secluded life in the little fenced-in DDR, etc. At the same time, this concentration with the attendant anti-capitalist, pro-Russian/Chinese etc. leanings pretty much locks their paths to power into a region with just 20 percent of the German population. If you read the comments section of the pro-AfD weekly "Junge Freiheit" (not to be confused with the orthodox Marxist "Junge Welt", though they frequently align in their takes), you'll find remaining conservative sympathizers complaining frequently about just that.

There has been talk of trying to ban the party by mostly the usual suspects for years, but this would be a drawn-out high-stakes process before the Constitutional Court. It has been done successfully only twice: in 1952 against the Socialist Reich Party which was basically a successor organisation of the NSDAP, and in 1956 against the Communist Party. In 2001 it was tried against the neo-Nazi National Democrat Party, but failed twice. In 2003 the Constitutional Court abated the first trial due to the usual dilemma that government informers providing evidence might themselves influence the anti-constitutional direction of the party. So those informers were cut off and another attempt made in 2013. In 2017 the court ruled that the party was clearly aiming to overthrow the constitutional order, but by now was so weakened that it had no realistic chance for it, and thus a ban would be disproportionate.

That added an additional burden of proof, making future bans harder, though with anti-constitutionality established as such, the NPD could be deprived of public funding. E. g., under German law any party admitted to run in state, national or European elections gets an annual campaign cost refund of 1.05 Euro per vote cast for them, 0.86 for votes after the first four million. The government also adds 45 cent to every Euro gained from membership fees and donations up to 3,300 Euro per natural person; the total of public funds may not exceed a party's self-generated intake. The intention is to reduce dependence upon and influence of special interests, and level the playing field somewhat for smaller parties.

Anyway, the argument could probably be made that the AfD with its current public influence and foreign support in fact has a realistic chance of overthrowing the system if that was established to be their aim by the Constitutional Court. But that is by no means a given, and in any case would take years to arrive at, with all the usual arguments against trying: proceedings would give them added martyr status with sympathizers, the court possibly ruling for them would be a huge win for them, and in the end you can ban parties, but not opinions - voters will go somewhere else, like the nominally left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance which promotes much the same politics.

There is a motion by a multi-party group of 113 Bundestag members from November that parliament should initiate a banning process, but it's currently unclear if it will even proceed to voting before the elections. Even then you'd be lucky if the Constitutional Court ruled on the case before the next. In the meantime, the AfD may be good for about 20 percent at the upcoming polls, plus-minus four or so. Which will be really annoying for coalition-making among centrists, particularly if the Wagenknecht crew gets another ten plus-minus. But while up to a third of voters going to the ends of the horseshoe is a definite warning sign, it's not yet the end of the Republic.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BansheeOne,

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
Anyway, with campaigning now having gone on for weeks in all but name even before the election date became official today, we're seeing the typical effect of poll numbers on a converging path. AfD and SPD have been recovering, and so have the Greens and BSW more recently. Meanwhile CDU/CSU remain firmly in lead, and it is generally being expected that their candidate Friedrich Merz will be the next chancellor; though which partner he will chose for a coalition that will almost certainly become necessary again remains to be seen.

First party conventions are now through. Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the SPD and Alice Weidel of the AfD were confirmed as candidates bei theirs this weekend. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance is holding theirs today, and Liberals and Left Party are still to follow - but their prospects of even entering the Bundestag are iffy, and they won't name a dedicated candidate for the chancellorship. CDU also still to confirm their candidate Friedrich Merz, but no surprises expected. With a near-full deck of surveys from major pollsters for the new year (see auto-updated Wiki aggregate at the top of the page), the previous trend is mostly confirmed: Leading CDU/CSU giving in some, AfD and Greens once more rising in unison as the poles in polical debate like before the current government. Though the SPD seems stuck around an average of 16 percent.

More interestingly, Sahra Wagenknecht's BSW is perilously dropping towards the five-percent threshold despite their recent grand successes in East German state elections. The quarreling around those is probably partly to blame: Both people expecting them to get shit done in state governments rather than arguing about Ukraine and US medium-range-missiles in West Germany, and those who wanted a more ideological pure approach to those issue, were probably disappointed by the real-world compromises they eventually took, and the infighting surrounding those. The young party also remains beset by internal dissent about the centralization of leadership. Most notable in the previously-mentioned case of Hamburg with competing state chapters, repeats of local conventions with party rebels being banned, etc.

There may also be a self-reinforcing effect: People who jumped the horseshoe gap from AfD to BSW now judging the latter's chances doubtful, and jumping back to the original so as not to potentially waste their vote. At any rate, even though a big part of the AfD's rising numbers are from particularly benevolent reports by pollsters INSA and Yougov who are notoriously fringe-friendly due to their internet-based fieldwork, national public broadcaster ZDF's in-house pollster FGW also had them at 21 this week; and I trust them most due to their conservative methodology and track record. So it's quite possible the AfD will get back to their all-time high of 24 come the elections, while their nominally left-wing mirror of the BSW falters. Which if nothing else would make coalition-making among centrists in a likely four-party parliament easier.

As for campaign topics, the economy and immigration remain the leading issues in public opinion, with slight changes of which one's actually on top over time and between surveys. In the end you might say campaigns are always over the economy, so that's a no-brainer; as soon as the current government failed, the topic moved ahead of immigration to 34 percent of most-mentioned issues in both FGW's surveys and those of their fellow public broadcaster ARD's pollster Infratest. The latter currently has immigration slightly ahead again at 37, while FGW still reports 31; likely a current effect from media reports on the usual excesses in New Year celebrations focussed on heavily immigrant parts of big cities. Though the half-dozen actual deaths from reckless handling of illegal fireworks were mostly among middle-aged smalltowners, sparking the annual fruitless debate on banning private fireworks completely.

Other issues are further down the scale and vary in precedence between surveys, largely depending upon what's all lumped into one point: Infratest reports war/peace/foreign politics at 14 percent, while FGW has war/Ukraine/Russia at five; conversely, FGW has energy/climate at 18, while Infratest has environment/climate change at 13. Cost/wages/prices is 11 with FGW, inflation seven with Infratest, but the latter separately reports social injustice/poverty/basic welfare at eleven while FGW has the "social gradient" at six. More single-digit issues are education, domestic security/crime/terrorism, pensions, healthcare, right-wingers, and general political disenchantment. Sometime in the next weeks I'll take these as an excuse to detail the state of German defense politics since it's what matters most to me, but no time right now.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BansheeOne,

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
Anyway, with campaigning now having gone on for weeks in all but name even before the election date became official today, we're seeing the typical effect of poll numbers on a converging path. AfD and SPD have been recovering, and so have the Greens and BSW more recently. Meanwhile CDU/CSU remain firmly in lead, and it is generally being expected that their candidate Friedrich Merz will be the next chancellor; though which partner he will chose for a coalition that will almost certainly become necessary again remains to be seen. Realistic pretenders are SPD and Greens, both of which are however tainted to conservative Christian Democrats by their association with the outgoing government. If given the choice, they would definitely prefer the traditional partnership with the Liberals. But it's not sure those will even make the five-percent threshold to enter parliament again, much less provide enough seats for a majority.

The Wikipedia graph of aggregate polls doesn't really show it due to the scale and the timelag of the regression model, but two weeks out from elections, the converging trend has stopped. With individual pollsters, everyone is basically where they'be been since mid-January, plus-minus a point or so; you actually see that in the chart's data points. Somewhat of an exception are developments on the (nominal) hard left, where Sahra Wagenknecht's anti-progressive BSW seems to be flaming out on approach, polling just around the five-percent threshold now. Meanwhile the traditional Left Party, already pronounced dead, is making a run to straddle that threshold in the final lap. For both, two points of change from earlier numbers could make all the difference.

The general flatlining otherwise is probably because essentially, everyone has been busy shooting themselves in the foot recently. The Greens were doing fine recovering from last year's low until their chancellor candidate Robert Habeck came up with an idea to tax capital gains, including what people have by way of life insurance etc. That made people question whether he had learned anything from the communications disaster that were his plans for environmentally-friendly private heating in 2023. This was immediately followed by an affair within the party which had everything to capture the attention of the boulevard: charges of sexual misconduct, political intrigue, and shoddy (or possibly activist) journalism.

At the center of it all was Stefan Gelbhaar, who had already been nominated district candidate for Berlin-Pankow with a 92-percent vote by the local party chapter conference. Just before slots on the state list for the all-important "secondary" vote were to be distributed, he suddenly announced he was withdrawing from competition for the second position on that, a fairly safe place for the Berlin Greens to get into the Bundestag even without winning a district directly. Notably, his competitor who was nominated instead was Andreas Audretsch, from the party's left wing, and also campaign manager for Robert Habeck (though the latter, like Gelbhaar, is from the moderate "realist" wing).

Gelbhaar only stated some nebulous "accusations" lodged against him with the party state chapter's ombuds office as the reason for his withdrawl. Of course that spurred media into investigations which soon turned up allegations of sexual misconduct towards female party members. Berlin-Brandenburg public broadcaster RBB eventually published claims by semi-anonymized accusers involving rather serious charges of not just unwanted kisses and touching, but also K.O. drugs and statutory sexual assault. Gelbhaar stated that noone had even told him of those accusations before, and denied it all. Yet the local party chapter, fearing a PR disaster, pushed him into resigning from his district nomination, too, and hastily elected a young woman in his stead at an eleventh-hour special convention.

No sooner had that happened than the Berlin daily "Tagesspiegel", which had gotten hold of the affidavits by one of RBB's sources, found that no such person was known at the stated address, or even listed in the Berlin residents registry; besides other formal errors, such at not giving the affiant's date of birth. RBB hastily followed up and eventually stated that the person likely didn't exist, and had probably been invented by a female Green district politician who established the "contact". While the latter denied this, she couldn't prove the existence of the source either, and RBB filed a criminal complaint over the deceit. The lady hadn't been named by this point in public, but her identity became immediately clear when she quit all her functions and party membership at the end of the week without stating manifest reasons.

It turned out that she had been first to raise allegations against Gelbhaar at a meeting of the Berlin Greens' left wing last November, which also caused some other women to complain to the party's ombuds office about past experiences with him making them feel "uneasy". Yet the serious and criminally relevant accusations came from her made-up "source". RBB had to admit they never met that person, only talked to her by phone. With that hair-raising journalistic conduct, people started pointing out that Gelbhaar's competitor Audretsch was also a radio journalist who had at a time worked for RBB, and asking if chancellor candidate Robert Habeck had anything to say about his campaign manager benefiting from the accusations. In the end, the whole affair left only losers - Gelbhaar, who is out of his district nomination, his accusers, the party leadership which tried to ignore everything at best possible, and the Greens' reputation as a feminist party.

Meanwhile over at the other political pole, the right-wing AfD was also doing fine building back up to their strength of a year ago - right until Elon Musk got the bright idea to jump into German politics by endorsing them and doing an X-Space interview with their chancellor candidate Alice Weidel. I still don't know what they were even thinking: holding an interview, in English, set in that weird American right-wing alternate universe where Hitler was a communist, George Soros is the head of the judeo-masonic world conspiracy, and generally everything is seen through the lens of inner-American cultural warfare ... to rouse voters for a German nationalist party with a prominent anti-globalist and thus anti-American streak, always complaining about US global political meddling and (un-)cultural hegemony?

Both were also unprepared, Musk mispronouncing Weidel's name, Weidel unaware of the intended timeframe and cutting the end short, and both holding a meandering debate about God, Mars, etc. In the end, the AfD's selling point for the interview was merely that it happened. Their anti-globalist competitor Sahra Wagenknecht wasted no time calling Weidel a "submissive fangirl" of Musk's to her face on the talkshow circuit, clearly hoping to win back some of their common voter base to recover the BSW's stalling. In the end, effects for and against the AfD largely cancelled out each other. That Musk doubled down and video-urged the party to get rid of that German guilt at their national convention to rousing applause, on the eve of Holocaust Memorial Day and hot on the heels of the controversy about his "Hitler salute", didn't really help either.

The AfD should have been able to profit from a recent incident where another deranged Afghan refugee attacked a kindergarten group, stabbing a Moroccan kid and an intervening adult to death; it brought the immigration topic back to top in public debate, and couldn't have been timed better for them if they had bought the knife for the guy and told him to do it. But it was Friedrich Merz of the center-right Christian Democrats who seized the initiative and courted controversy by introducing a resolution and a draft law calling for a stricter border regime and general tightening of immigration law into the Bundestag, announcing that he didn't care who would vote for them to get a majority. Which obviously meant he was going to accept the AfD's votes despite the CDU's official policy, and consensus among all centrist parties, not to cooperate with them.

Predictably that triggered lots of screaming from the left, public protests, Holocaust survivors handing back official decorations etc., but Merz was undeterred. Eventually the resolution passed with the votes of most CDU/CSU and classically liberal FDP as well as all AfD members, despite also containing sharp anti-AfD language; though with the BSW as well as some from CDU/CSU and FDP abstaining or chosing not to vote, it would have failed if the government and Left Party had bothered to show up in full strength. Of course afterwards, in his usual fashion Merz got up to say that he hadn't actually been seeking the AfD's votes, and was "sorry" if the motion had happened to pass with those.

Even conservative supporters were uneasy about the thing; torn between the strategic overturning of the dictum that you cannot pursue even the most logical policy if the far Right agrees with it - even though looking at the state, county and municipal level, every party has done this, and as noted before, Social Democrats and Greens had no problem being supported by the successors of the East German socialist state party pretty soon after reunificaton - and worry that it would cost them at the polls, and benefit the AfD, losing first place to the more radical anti-immigration party. So when the actual draft law came up, even more from CDU/CSU and FDP abstained, while the left side of the house mustered enough votes to defeat the initiative this time.

In the end, not much happened: After some continued dipping, CDU/CSU stabilized back at the ca. 30 percent they polled at in mid-January, while the AfD if anything dipped by a point, too, staying at the 20-22 they had in the same timeframe. This seems to vindicate Merz' approach that you can curb the far Right if the Center-Right provides popular or "common sense" policies as an alternative; or maybe his maneuvering trying to appease everyone after the fact prevented the negative effects everyone worried about. Of course SPD and Greens questioned his aptitude for the chancellorship and their possible support for it in a future coalition, Robert Habeck of the Greens going as far as making an apology for the affair a condition for any black-green government. Though I'm sure once the votes are counted on election day, everyone will make choices best serving the power perspective of their respective party and themselves.

Too long again to include my promised take on German defense politics as my personal top issue; maybe I'll find some more time this weekend.

So, defense politics.

Time: In 2023, conventional wisdom in NATO was that we had three to eight years before Russia had rebuilt its military enough to pose a credible threat to alliance territory. The predictions became more alarmist the further you went east, with Russia's immediate neighbors like Poland and the Baltic States warning of the minimum three years. I never saw any good bases for those estimates and tend to think there was more of a political reasoning - from "Trump may surrender Ukraine in 2025, and Russia will invade us the next year" to "the current NATO plans horizon is 2031, so that's what we prepare for".

Two years later, the minimum assumption is still three years, with a maximum of five. I would like to think this is now based on more solid observations and projections of Russian military production and reorganization; current German defense minister Boris Pistorius has consistently maintained that the Bundeswehr needs to be "war-capable" by 2029. This year, a fully digitized mechanized division rebuilt with capabilities for high-intensity peer conflict from the era of expeditionary warfare in Afghanistan etc. should reach IOC, with FOC expected in 2027, followed by the rest of the force.

Money: Everyone has focussed on the 100-billion-Euro special funds extra to the national budget which was installed after Chancellor Olaf Scholz called a Zeitenwende (turn of times, sea change) after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to jump-start capability rebuilding and plug the gaps caused by underfinancing since the 1990s. Which sounds impressive, but comes with some caveats. First, everyone understood at the time that those billions would come on top of finally satisfying NATO's defense spending goal of two percent of the GDP from the regular budget. After everyone was done debating, claiming and being denied a piece of the cake, that turned out to be not the case. Rather, Germany reached 2.12 percent for the first time again last year including expenses from the extra funds.

Slow adaption by procurement bureaucracy up to and including inept then-defense minister Christine Lambrecht, plus the fact that industry can't just ramp up production from decades of piecemeal level for you to spend billions on at the snap of a finger, also lost us at least a year before Pistorius got in and started things rolling in earnest - with inflation, taxes etc. taking their toll on the substance. Most of all, pretty soon experts stated that the real modernization gap would need another 300-400 billion to make up for completely after the 100 billion run out in 2027. The outgoing government has so far made no provisions for that; their current five-year financial plans horizon shows a sudden jump in the regular defense budget to meet the two-percent target in 2028 with no previous ramp-up, knowing full well it likely won't be their job to effect that anymore.

Moreover, those two percent are now a target long in the past. As soon as 2023, opinion in NATO became that those should be a bottom rather than a target; for a year now, debate has been for three to 3.5 percent. In the German campaign, statements on that have been muted, probably out of fear of voters - though surveys show there's a broad agreement for higher defense spending (as long as it doesn't mean balancing cuts for me, of course). A notable exception has been Green candidate Robert Habeck of all people, who when asked in an interview said he was fully on board with the experts suggesting up to 3.5 percent (see translated article on that below). Of course there's an underlying connection to the constitutional mandate for a balanced budget, with left-wing parties having long wanted the debt cap lifted. So they likely see more defense spending as a door opener for more debts and more spending overall.

People: Before reunification, West Germany had a conscript army with a peacetime strength of 495,000; East Germany had another 160,000. The Two-plus-four Treaty limited united Germany to a total of 370,000. Development towards high-tech forces and expeditionary warfare meant that conscripts became increasingly seen as a burden who tied up ressources for training and leadership by volunteer professionals who could otherwise handle sophisticated equipment and deploy oiutside NATO territory. The share of conscripts was thus sequentially lowered by reducing duration of their term and selective drafting. The War on Terror accelerated this; from 2004, less than 70,000 conscripts were called up annually to serve mere nine-month-terms in a force of 250,000 total.

That produced barely-useful soldiers, but more selective drafting like in Scandinavia was barred by a ruling of the Constitutional Court that an infringement on personal freedom as serious as compulsory military service had at least to be applied as equally as possible. Eventually, conscription was suspended in 2011, with a target strength for a leaner, meaner, more deployable force of 185,000 volunteers. Like other Western forces though, the Bundeswehr never quite made targets without internal recruiting from conscripts, and competing with a booming civilian job market. Following the first Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, the mid-term aim became 203,000 until 2032 with lots of effort at better service conditions. For a time, there was a slight turnaround, but then COVID played hell with recruiting efforts, and strength currently remains closer to 180,000.

There has been a move to build up at least a mobilization pool of 60,000 reservists by introducing a six-year period for immediate recall of separating soldiers. However, since 2022 in particular there has been increasing debate of bringing back conscription for purposes of internal recruiting and more reserves; and to fill the manning needs for securing the vital NATO logistics hub of Germany, if not actual deployments for high-tech warfare on the eastern flank. The former Territorial Army was disbanded in 2007, though from 2012 some Regional Security and Support Companies were raised again. From 2021 those were renamed Homeland Protection Companies and sucessively organized into six regional regiments. There are plans for a massive expansion, which have however not been fully disclosed ahead of the elections.

Last summer, after much debate for and against conscription in the now-failed government coalition, Defense Minister Pistorius announced a scheme for a new semi-voluntary service which would see all 18-year-olds being sent a questionary on their physical and mental disposition towards serving, with return obligatory for males and voluntary for females. Those found promising would then be "invited" for assessment and offered an appropriate service option. From experience in Scandinavia, Pistorius hoped to recruit an extra 5,000 in 2025, subsequently increasing as training and quartering capacities of the Bundeswehr were being built up. The breakup of the government threw a spanner into that, as CDU/CSU called it insufficient and demanded a more compulsory scheme.

Whatever comes will still have to be negotiated in the next government coalition, but some sort of compulsory service is fast becoming pretty much inevtiable. After the Russian 2022 invasion, plans were to have three each heavy and medium plus two light brigades in the army by 2032 under three division and one corps HQ with appropriate support troops, which would also lead additional allied troops; the Dutch and German forces are almost fully integrated at this point. Two more brigades were envisioned as possible later, with one materializing rather quickly as Germany agreed in 2023 to permanently forward-deploy forces in Lithuania for the first time since WW II. This new brigade will also absorb the current German-led multinational NATO battlegroup there, and is to be fully operational in 2027.

However, by 2023 NATO also faced the possibility that a potential Russian attack might not be resolved quickly and decisively, but lead to attritional warfare like in Ukraine. In early 2024, military command of the alliance issued revised minimum capability requirements: 131 rather than 82 combat brigades, 38 rather than 24 division and 15 rather than six corps HQs including support troops, 104 instead of 90 helicopter formations, 1,467 rather than 293 ground-based air defense units, etc. Typically, Germany is allocated about ten percent of NATO requirements. Even before that, it was generally assumed that the future German force would require a peacetime strength of 230-250,000 rather than the officially-stated 203,000. For the additional requirements, reports from the Ministry of Defense suggested another 75,000 were necessary. Required wartime strength including territorial defense and casualty replacement was publicly stated as 460,000.

Capabilities: The 100-billion-funds has been mostly allocated at this point. Much of it for mundane, but essential things like personal equipment, communications gear and logistics vehicles. But also to rebuild capabilities for high-intensity warfare which were thought no longer needed to chase sandal-wearing warriors in sandy places like armor and, particularly, artillery and ground-based air defense; and not least, ammunition stocks. A big batch was the buy of F-35 fighters to continue the German role in NATO's nuclear sharing scheme, something that was unpopular before the war in Ukraine and widely thought to expire with the Tornados who are the current weapons platform.

A new field emerging from the lessons of Ukraine is missile defense and long-range precision strikes. The first battery of the Israeli Arrow 3 ABM system is planned to be delivered by the end of the year, with two more to follow. The future Type 127 frigates will also have a missile defense role, similar in size and capability to the American Burke-class destroyers with which they will probably share the Aegis system. For the offensive part, France, Germany, Italy and Poland signed an agreement to jointly develop a ground-based intermediate-range strike system, later joined by Sweden and the UK. Until this comes online, the need will be filled by the "episodic" basing of the American Typhon system launching Tomahawk and SM-6 missiles. There is also some German interest to procure Tomahawk as a stopgap solution, but in light of events in Ukraine, it should no longer be considered survivable against Russian air defenses.

As noted upthread, the basing of US missiles was a controversial issue particularly exploited by Sahra Wagenknecht's BSW in the recent East German state elections, but plays less of a role in the current national campaign. The defense topic is couched mostly in terms of pro- vs. anti-NATO/US/Ukraine between centrist parties and the fringe on the left and right. Notably though, one flare-up was within the residual government coalition when the Greens accused Chancellor Scholz of holding up a three-billion aid package for Ukraine, with the latter building a strawman that help for others shouldn't be at the expense of pensioners and the socially weak. As it happens, the immediate cause for Scholz firing Finance Minister Christian Lindner of the FDP, resulting in the breakup of the coalition, was the latter holding up the same package with referral to the constitutional debt cap. Which brings us back to the central role of that issue in much of the campaigning, spelt out or not.

I also have an article wth observations on the NATO debate in general, but it's rather lenghthy; so I will stick to the one dealing more narrowly with the spending target. Maybe I'll post the other at another opportunity.

quote:

NATO defense spending: The 3.5 percent hurdle

January 18, 2025

That of all people the Green candidate for chancellor, Robert Habeck, broke cover on the issue of future defense spending during the election campaign, surprised many. As is known, in an interview with Der Spiegel, Habeck replied to that: "According to expert calculations, around three and a half percent of our economic output will be needed for defense in the next few years. I agree with that." This value is of course not new: at the Munich Security Conference almost a year ago, Federal Defense Minister Boris Pistorius already said that three to 3.5 percent would probably be necessary in the future in order to continue strengthening the Bundeswehr after the 100-billion special fund expires. Since then, at the latest, this target range has been the basis for discussion in NATO for the spending target for the coming years.

Even Donald Trump, who made headlines in recent days with demands for five percent shortly before his inauguration as re-elected US President, is likely to accept this. As early as December 20, the Financial Times reported that emissaries had told Trump's European contacts that he would demand five percent, but would agree to 3.5 percent (for better trade terms in return). This is likely not least because the US itself currently spends just under 3.4 percent of its economic output on defense and would otherwise have to increase this by half. That would not exactly fit Trump's narrative of the European "contributors" who are defaulting, and whose defense America is spending far too much money on.

Defense spending as a diversionary tactic

His typical modus operandi is to make unrealistic demands and then sell the increase which was already a broad consensus as a success. [...] This would not only benefit his own portrayal to the domestic audience. After agreeing on a target of 3.5 percent for defence spending, European politicians could also present themselves to the electorate as steadfast defenders who have not given in to the US President's excessive demands for more.

Robert Habeck has of course also dutifully rejected this. But if it does end up being 3.5 percent, he can point out that he has been saying this for a long time. The fact that setting rigid figures for defense spending does not necessarily reflect the true contribution to common security remains unaffected by this. However, Germany in particular not only has a money problem, but also continues to have an effectiveness problem with the resources used. So perhaps political capital should be used to further clear the jungle of bureaucracy and self-restrictions on procurement and deployment rather than debating percentages. That could also be tried as an election campaign issue.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BansheeOne,

quote:

Originally posted by BansheeOne:
The Wikipedia graph of aggregate polls doesn't really show it due to the scale and the timelag of the regression model, but two weeks out from elections, the converging trend has stopped. With individual pollsters, everyone is basically where they'be been since mid-January, plus-minus a point or so; you actually see that in the chart's data points. Somewhat of an exception are developments on the (nominal) hard left, where Sahra Wagenknecht's anti-progressive BSW seems to be flaming out on approach, polling just around the five-percent threshold now. Meanwhile the traditional Left Party, already pronounced dead, is making a run to straddle that threshold in the final lap. For both, two points of change from earlier numbers could make all the difference.

Elections tomorrow. The flatlining has been visible in the chart on top of this page for a week now. At this point, it actually shows a reversal of previous trends, though again that may be due to the regression model and timescale. While the lines make it look like a change occurred in late January when Friedrich Merz of the CDU took away the immigration topic from the right-wing AfD, individual polls rather suggest that everyone had simply made up his mind a week earlier already, and stuck to their choice ever since. The interesting exception remains the Left Party which continues its meteoric rise from the dead, now polling comfortably in the seven-percent range with the potential for more.

They're doing particularly well with young voters, showing the political volatility of that age group after everyone freaked about them breaking heavily for the AfD in last year's EU elections, and for both Greens and the classically liberal FDP in 2021. Credit has gone to their young top candidate Heidi Reichinnek who has run a successful social media campaign. Though they're also doing the good old-fashioned door-to-door canvassing here in Berlin; they were the only ones to show up at my place, ever. That all the troublemakers around Sahra Wagenknecht left the party for the BSW and are currently nosediving since the East German state elections may also have something to do with their ascent.

Meanwhile the AfD, again, should have been able to profit from last week's car ramming attack by another Afghan into a union march in Munich (and BTW, the recent concentration of such incidents ahead of the elections looks really suspicious at this point). But just like Elon Musk's weird interview with their candidate Alice Weidel in January, the clueless hamfisted intervention of J. D. Vance on their behalf at the Munich Security Conference probably did them more harm than good (because everyone knows voters everywhere are just waiting for foreign billionaires and government figures to tell them what's good for their country, right?). At this point they'll be lucky to stay over 20 percent.

Of course polls are polls, and results are results. The former tend to get the latter well around here, but election.de has helpfully compiled charts showing average deviation of the three biggest German pollsters from actual outcomes a week ahead of national elections since 2005; both as an average of all three in each, and of every single one across all elections. Basically, the two big(gish) parties tend to come out one or two points worse than predicted by individual pollsters, while Greens and Left Party mostly meet expectations, and FDP and AfD tend to exceed them by one or two points. But then again that trend is not uniform in each election across all pollsters, so an element of surprise remains. Which is how it's supposed to be of course, or we could just decide elections by surveys.





Interestingly, both my most- and least-trusted pollsters FGW and YouGov also have CDU/CSU two or three points below 30, while everyone else sees them there or above. FDP and BSW are also polling at 4.5 to five percent in some surveys and could yet make the cut, complicating coalition-making by creating a six- or seven-party parliament again. CDU/CSU had hoped to avoid a government of three partners (particular since the Bavarian CSU already has very much its own mind); but some of the last polls show that to be a close or no proposition now even with the SPD, which is the conservative's preferred partner over the Greens. In fact Robert Habeck of the Greens hinted this week that SPD and Greens could possibly form a government with the Left Party and BSW if both make it, though that's actually unlikely and mostly campaign rethoric.

Polls do have me reconsidering my usual vote for the first time, actually. All my life I've been a classical liberal-conservative voter - chosing FDP with the more important secondary vote because they're really the only party focussed on individual freedoms (even if it's mostly for the sake of economic politics these days), and CDU with the primary because they are the ones with a chance to win districts directly (though my own has been solid Green for a long time). In view of the challenges to the next government, particularly in my chief area of interest in security and defense, I'm however debating to give both votes to the CDU to help clearer majorities in the Bundestag. Not fully decided yet though, and may unusually only do it in the booth.

Speaking of districts - expected outcomes on the election.de map haven't changed substantially compared to the one posted six weeks ago. Though the Left Party has made solid progress for their level here too, expanding lead from just two to five districts. AfD has improved marginally from 44 to 45, Greens from nine to eleven, SPD from 30 to 34. The balance obviously goes at the expense of CDU/CSU who have dropped from 214 to 204. But as noted, that will not affect seat distribution by popular vote in the Bundestag.



I won't be quick with election results and analysis, since I'll be at a defense fair in Nuremberg next week. Maybe on the following weekend, but with things undergoing another exponential acceleration in my professional field since the Munich Security Conference, I'll be glad if I can post on the eventual formation of the next government, expected to happen in April or May - and only because I have three weeks off around Easter. Of course results will be plastered all over the net anyway, accompanied by shrieks of joy and terror depending upon politics of the respective source.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BansheeOne,

^^^
Thank you for your continued analysis of German politics. I sincerely appreciate it.

"I wish them luck."

https://x.com/DefiantLs/status/1893061231029649499

And while I'm on a caffeine-fueled empty-stomach roll, I ran the NATO article mentioned in the defense politics post through the translator. After Munich it looks a little dated, but the basic statements remain valid.

quote:

70 years of German NATO membership: How collective is our security still?

February 1, 2025

“We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.” – Attributed to Benjamin Franklin

This May marks the 70th anniversary of the Federal Republic of Germany joining NATO. Looking at the crises and wars around Europe, it can be said that the alliance has never been more important in the last 35 years than it is today. It is probably no coincidence that it has never been more questioned at the same time. After the end of the Cold War, there was widespread criticism that it had lost its purpose. The acute threat resulting from Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine has of course since then spectacularly refuted this. But perhaps this is precisely why efforts to weaken and even destroy it, based on particular interests both inside and outside NATO, are currently gaining momentum.

This naturally applies to actors such as Russia, who also use their influence on critics and malcontents at all levels within the alliance. This is nothing new, just a continuation of the same behavior during the Cold War. The fact that the American government is questioning US NATO membership is perhaps a novelty in this form. But the underlying dispute between (primarily) Americans and Europeans over burden-sharing runs through the entire history of the alliance. Though one should not pretend that this is a one-way street. Populist complaints during the American "War on Terror" that the US was using its "European vassals" as suppliers of auxiliary troops to enforce its global dominance are also part of this.

Misunderstanding of Collective Security

This attitude is echoed by the opinion among current critics of Western support for Ukraine that the US is pushing through its interests against Russia at the expense of the Europeans. Or even killing two political and economic rivals with one stone, since the European economy suffers much more from the Western sanctions regime due to its closer ties to Russia. At the same time, Europe was supporting Ukraine far more in terms of money and share of economic output, and also incurring great costs by taking in Ukrainian refugees.

This narrative, which is not factually incorrect but clearly Russian-informed in its thrust, is therefore based on an existing dissatisfaction with the distribution of power in the alliance. This, in turn, ignores the fact that the US has actually contributed to European security for decades with great financial and personnel commitments. The origin of such criticism from both the American and European sides ultimately lies in a misunderstanding of the concept of collective security. Correctly interpreted, this means that the sum of the alliance is greater than its parts. In this understanding, it does not matter, for example, that a large part of the American resources are directed at the Pacific region and parts of the world other than Europe.

Practical Limits of the Principle

The same applies to the fact that America's NATO partners sent a total of more than 600,000 troops to Afghanistan over 20 years after the only practical case of collective defense in the history of the alliance. According to this approach, what makes the world safer for one alliance partner makes it safer for all. European participation in the "War on Terror" after the attacks on the USA on 11 September 2001 was logically justified by the fact that the international terrorism of Al-Qaeda with its base of operations in Afghanistan posed a threat to the entire Western world. Even if this participation put NATO partners themselves more in the focus of terrorists: collective defence as a practical expression of collective security also entails a collective risk for the alliance partners.

This principle, described somewhat exaggeratedly by then-US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1965 at the beginning of the Vietnam War as "Berlin is defended on the Mekong", of course has its limits in practice. There was a good reason why NATO as an organization did not participate in the poorly justified and ultimately counterproductive Iraq War. This not only increased the threat of terrorism in neighboring Europe, far more than in the US. It also destabilized the security situation through subsequent effects. Such as the emergence of the previously non-existent Al-Qaeda in Iraq and eventually of the "Islamic State", its genocide of the Yazidis and its participation in the Syrian civil war, with the mass exodus that this triggered.

Who benefits from whom?

NATO only came into play again when attempts were made to bring these consequences under control. For example, through training missions for Iraqi security forces between 2004 and 2011, and again from 2018 after the rise of the "Islamic State". On the other hand, in 2011 the alliance took over the leadership of the intervention in Libya, which was launched on a European initiative, and which subsequently did not have a particularly positive effect on the security situation in the European area either. In this case, NATO's takeover was mainly due to American fears that its own role as a leading power vis-à-vis the Europeans would otherwise be damaged.

In Afghanistan, the alliance remained committed until the US itself unilaterally decided to withdraw after the 2020 peace agreement with the Taliban, and then implemented it without coordination with its allies. Poor implementation, however, does not make the principle of collective security wrong. Otherwise, the idea of ​​an alliance is reduced to the question of which partners the alliance benefits "more". The simple answer to this is, of course: always those who are most threatened. During the Cold War, and again since the Russian attacks on Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, these were the European NATO frontline states. In an emergency, these would also have been defended by more distant partners, in particular the US.

The Importance of NATO for American Security

This does not mean that the latter did not benefit from the alliance - according to the principle of forward defence against a common threat, and especially for the stronger members by using their own influence on the common potential to realise their own interests. In this sense, the US benefited more from its NATO allies after the Cold War and especially during the "War on Terror". Not only through their military involvement, but also through the network of bases that serve global power projection, and in some cases American security directly. For example, the early warning radars against air and missile attacks in Canada, Greenland and Great Britain.

With regard to future threats from the Middle East, other facilities worth mentioning include those in Poland, Romania and Turkey, as well as the Rota naval base for ships with missile defence capabilities in Spain. In addition, there are the logistical hubs and supply facilities for operations throughout Europe, Africa and Western Asia, such as Ramstein. Or the relay station for controlling drones in Sigonella, Italy. The role as NATO's leading power also ensures that the US has political influence on shaping the relationships of its European partners with third parties such as China and Iran - even if their interests do not necessarily coincide with the American ones. Last but not least, the alliance also means markets for the US defence industry.

The German Hub as a Target of Attack

The fact that individual alliance partners are well aware of their importance for the USA is shown by the notoriously low defense spending of Canada, for example, despite all American demands. Due to its geographical location, this country can be fairly certain that its existing security needs will be covered by its large neighbor. The same applies to the southern European NATO members Italy, Spain and Portugal. They provide important bases along the strategic lines of communication across the Atlantic and through the Mediterranean, including in the Azores. In this sense, Germany also implicitly took the position for a long time after the Cold War that it was of greater value to American interests as an indispensable logistical hub without any threat from direct neighbors than was reflected in its military strength.

This has changed since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Germany has also shown, particularly through the permanent stationing of a tank brigade in the NATO frontline state of Lithuania, that it has internalized the principle of collective security and defense from its own experiences during the Cold War. It is therefore probably no coincidence that this principle is being attacked so much by divergent interests in this country. If Germany leaves the alliance, not only will its military contributions be lacking, but the collective defense of Europe as a whole will be at risk. The fact that this makes it the most important NATO partner after the US also makes it the second most important target of such efforts. In this respect, it is also important to protect the idea of ​​collective security in these two countries in particular.

At the rate all these mass stabbings and vehicular crowd attacks keep happening in Germany by these “migrants” from Syria and other shitholes, AFD is going to cruise to an easy victory.

It seems to me that German people believe they are targeted because they still haven’t bent over far enough.

Germans vote as far right surges in polarised national election

Voting kicked off in Germany on Sunday in an increasingly polarised election, with the conservatives tipped to claim victory after a campaign rocked by a far-right bump in the polls and the dramatic return of Donald Trump to the US presidency.

https://www.france24.com/en/eu...ed-national-election

Germans began voting Sunday in a pivotal election, with the conservatives the strong favourites after a campaign rocked by a far-right surge and the dramatic return of US President Donald Trump.

Polling stations opened at 8:00 am (0700 GMT) with more than 59 million Germans eligible to vote and first estimates based on exit polls expected after polls close at 6:00 pm (1700 GMT).

Frontrunner Friedrich Merz has vowed a tough rightward shift if elected to win back voters from the far-right anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is eyeing a record result after a string of deadly attacks blamed on asylum seekers.

If he takes over from embattled centre-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz, as widely predicted given a yawning poll gap, the CDU leader has promised a "strong voice" in Europe at a time of chaotic disruption.

The high-stakes vote in the European Union's biggest economy comes amid tectonic upheaval in US-Europe ties sparked by Trump's direct outreach to Russian President Vladimir Putin over their heads to end the Ukraine war.

Across Europe, NATO allies worry about the future of the alliance, nowhere more than in Germany which grew prosperous under the US-led security umbrella.

However, it may take Merz many weeks to negotiate a coalition government, spelling yet more political paralysis in Berlin during such fraught times.

In a strange twist to the polarised campaign, the AfD has basked in the glowing support lavished on it by Trump's entourage, with billionaire Elon Musk touting it as the only party to "save Germany".

Trump, asked about the elections in Germany, which he has berated over its trade, migration and defence policies, said dismissively that "I wish them luck, we got our own problems".

Merz, in his final CDU/CSU campaign event in Munich on Saturday, said Europe needed to walk tall to be able to "sit at the main table" of the world powers.

Voicing strong confidence, the 69-year-old former investment lawyer told supporters that "we will win the elections and then the nightmare of this government will be over".

"There is no left majority and no left politics anymore in Germany," Merz told a raucous beer hall, promising to tighten border controls and revive flagging Germany Inc.

Trade war feared
For the next German leader, more threats loom from the United States, long its bedrock ally, if Trump sparks a trade war that could hammer Germany's recession-hit economy.

Scholz will stay in charge as caretaker until any new multi-party government takes shape -- a task which Merz has already said he hopes to achieve by Easter in two months.

Up to 30 percent of voters remained undecided last week, among them Sylvia Otto, 66, who said that "I still find it difficult to make a decision this time".

Speaking in Berlin, she said she wanted "a change -- but now a change to the right. That's very important to me".

At an AfD rally elsewhere in Berlin, a 49-year-old engineer, who gave his name only as Christian, praised the party's leader Alice Weidel as a "tough woman, stepping on the toes of the other parties".

These, he said, "are now adopting the AfD's programmes and passing them off as their own. So she is doing something right."

Spate of attacks
Germany's political crisis was sparked when Scholz's unhappy coalition collapsed on November 6, the day Trump was re-elected.

Scholz's SPD, the Greens and the liberal FDP had long quarrelled over tight finances.

The SPD's historically low polls ratings of around 15 percent suggest Scholz paid the price for policy gridlock and Germany's parlous economic performance at a time the Ukraine war sent energy prices through the roof.

Frustration with the leadership fuelled the rise of the AfD, which has been polling at 20 percent but looks set to stay in opposition as all other parties have vowed to keep it out of power.

The AfD, strongest in the ex-communist east, is on track for its best-ever result after Germany was shocked by a series of high-profile attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers.

In December a car-ramming through a Christmas market crowd killed six people and wounded hundreds, with a Saudi man arrested at the scene.

More deadly attacks followed, both blamed on Afghan asylum seekers: a stabbing spree targeting kindergarten children and another car-ramming attack in Munich.

On Friday, a Syrian man who police said wanted to "kill Jews" was arrested after a Spanish tourist was stabbed in the neck at Berlin's Holocaust memorial.

While Merz has vowed to shutter German borders and lock up those awaiting deportation, the AfD has argued that Germans will "vote for the original".

There was yet ANOTHER attack by an "asylum seeker" yesterday.

Anyone want to gander why Europe is moving right?

German Exit Polls Are Out: Conservatives Win, Will Form Coalition Govt; AfD Comes In Light

https://www.zerohedge.com/poli...on-all-you-need-know

Unlike previous elections which were anemic affairs, participation today was a whopping 84%, the highest since German reunification in 1990.

Results and graph at link.



https://www.france24.com/en/eu...uqAb4y644vhLBdhisSBM

Conservative CDU party comes in first trailed by far right, exit polls show
Germany's conservative opposition came out strongest in parliamentary elections on Sunday, exit polls showed, dealing a victory to Friedrich Merz in his bid to succeed Social Democrat Olaf Scholz as the next leader of Europe's largest economy.



Merz's CDU/CSU bloc won first place with 28.5% of the vote, followed by the Alternative for Germany (AfD) with 20%, a record for the far-right party, the public broadcaster ZDF reported.



Scholz's centre-left SPD garnered 16.5% of the vote, its worst-ever result, the projection showed.