If you don’t mind me asking, what’s going on with German elections? Most of the chatter on tumblr is, obviously, in German, and my German is not sophisticated enough to understand most of it
We voted for our parliament today! And it feels especially stressful this time. I'm gonna try to give a short summary.
We currently have 6 parties in parliament. Two of them are traditionally the biggest and usually, the one that gets the most votes will form a coalition with one or more of the others to form a government. The party with the most votes usually appoints the chancellor, the most powerful person in the country (the president is more of a figurehead). These are the parties:
CDU: Center-conservative. Angela Merkel is stepping down and they have a huge problem finding a replacement and having any kind of platform at all beyond "leftists bad". Also the usual conservative problems of financial scandals and right-wingers. Their candidate for chancellor (Laschet) is an both an ass and an incompetent clown.
SPD: Center-left. Social democrats. Traditionally strong among union workers. Their candidate for chancellor (Scholz) is pretty conservative for the party, and despite some financial scandals under his responsibility, general public perception of him is that he's like a fairly reliable normal politician which people crave in These Unprecedented Times.
Grüne: Green party. Slightly left of SPD. Has never been this big before, politics focused on the environment but good positions on social issues too. Their candidate for chancellor (Baerbock) has some flaws and also she's a woman and surprisingly, even after 16 years of Merkel, that's a noticeable disadvantage.
FDP: Economic liberals. The market will regulate itself!
Linke: Left party. Good on social stuff, incompetent on international politics, baggage bc of their historical connection to the GDR (which was bad).
AfD: Neonazis who pretend they're just Concerned Citizens.
According to the current projections, the social democrats got just sliiiightly more votes than the conservatives. Green party third strongest, but they were hoping for more. Liberals and Neonazis about the same. Left party will only get into parliament on a technicality. Basically I and many others were hoping for more, like maybe some more of those leftists the conservatives were so concerned about 👀
And now we all have to wait on the final results and THEN wait on who forms a coalition. This will be ROUGH bc it seems the liberals will have to be involved and they loooooove being important and blocking teamwork.
I hope that's comprehensive! I should have known when I started writing this that I would never be able to keep it short.
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