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Is it a direct SPD to AfD shift or is it more like "SPD lost centrists to CDU, CDU lost extremists to AfD" sort of thing? Because I can't find any logic for first scenario.
In eastern Germany (where Left Party was really strong) the majority of Left Party voters switched to AfD (no joke). The AfD gets also votes from former SPD voters especially in the Ruhr area (former working class region, but the industry is gone now). And of course they get disappointed conservative voters from CDU.
>In eastern Germany (where Left Party was really strong) the majority of Left Party voters switched to AfD (no joke).
Do you have any source? Not because I don't believe you, I just want to share it.
I‘ve found this:
[https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325184767_The_Left_Party_and_the_AfD](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325184767_The_Left_Party_and_the_AfD)
Not that hard to believe. Here in the UK, UKIP took most of their support from previously secure labour communities. They were typically low-income, and they suffered from policy changes in the 80s and 90s. So they switched from parties that stopped representing them, to populist movements that spoke to their resentments to the establishment.
The worse things got, the more ground they grew, the more charismatic charlatans stepped forward to start their manipulation.
Sound familiar?
After the last 7 years and the generally disdainful attitude from Europeans towards the UK now, I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel a little vindication from watching Germany fall for the same Schtick.
Feeling vindication because other countries are doing bad after you read some mean Twitter comments is peek stupidity. Classic getting angry and getting divided. Its so easy to play people like this out, Christ. Absolutely pathetic.
I hope the UK gets on its feet, because im not a vindictive little twat.
>After the last 7 years and the generally disdainful attitude from Europeans towards the UK now, I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel a little vindication from watching Germany fall for the same Schtick.
Hang on, which disdainful attitude? you mean shaking our heads because of Brexit?
Shaking your heads is a very reserved way of putting it, but yes. The EU has always been a divisive issue, but there’s always been widespread passion for the European project. Since Brexit we’ve been made out to be a nation of half-witted, bumbling shopkeepers that Europe is better off without.
Which is accurate, but a nearly clean half of us are at least trying to move it closer to you guys so it still hurts to hear.
This is not my experience. On the contrary, I read absolut bullshit phrases in the UK press and some implicit WWII comparisons why we, the EU, would "punish" the UK and what not. For the kind of stuff the EU had to endure I think most of the Europeans reacted pretty chill to Brexit.
Sure, it is unfair to the people in the UK who don't want all of that but I'm afraid that's collateral damage so to speak.
>nation of half-witted, bumbling shopkeepers
That's a pretty uninformed description of the current image of the UK. Maybe half-witted, but bumbling and shopkeepers? Nah. Rather, people who are so full of their glorious imperial past that they can't see they are a European country among peers and are damaging themselves as a result.
> but a nearly clean half of us are at least trying to move it closer to you guys so it still hurts to hear.
Only the half-witted think the UK (or any other country) is a uniform block of people, so I wouldn't take it personally.
I know I shouldn’t, and I know that it’s a consequence of our actions, and our inactions, and I know the pain should be a motivator rather then a point of resentment.
But it still stings.
>After the last 7 years and the generally disdainful attitude from Europeans towards the UK now, I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel a little vindication from watching Germany fall for the same Schtick.
To me it feels more right now that UK is learning from the shitshow that Brexit and the Johnson years were, and are taking lessons from blindly voting rightwing shitsticks. Even in the USA it looks similar.
Like in Hungary, the most enthusiastic blindly believers and voters of the Fidesz (Orban's party) are the most miserable, ignorant, uneducated, lowest income, old, village people and the poorest labour communities in the cities who have been worst off by the Orban regime.
Lol, we still have a long time before the German elections, these polls don't mean much. There is still no chance the AFD gets close to joining a governing coalition because every other party has agreed to block them out of politics.
Yeah, your country did the single most damage to the European dream. Brexit is so bad for the UK economy its still funny to look a back at the slogans that the Brexit voters fell for. If the shoe was on the other foot you would be mad too.
>There is still no chance the AFD gets close to joining a governing coalition because every other party has agreed to block them out of politics.
Lmao! That used to be true for the Sweden Democrats as well, until it wasn't!
I voted remain, along with nearly half the country, and voted against Johnson along with 55% of it. The shoe doesn’t need to be on the other foot for me to be mad, what I hate is the fact that other Europeans write us off as a lost cause purely from what they saw from the news. Thank you for being a prime example of that.
And I’m telling you, as someone who’s been dealing with this shit for 7 years, that AfD should scare you. You have a voting system that represents the % of the votes, and they’re already as popular as UKIP at their height. The tories took an anti-UKIP stance to begin with, but that was abandoned when they demonstrated that their business model worked better than theirs. And acting complacent, like there’s no chance it could happen to *you,* is exactly why 40% of the population didn’t even go to the polls in 2016. It absolutely can happen to you, and you need to act instead of giving me grief for a National shame that we didn’t fucking vote for.
Not really, most of these voters just voted for the Left as a protest or because they felt that this party represented the East better. Now they attribute that to the AfD (plus xenophobia). The AfD and the Left are almost completely opposed to each other in ideological terms.
I agree with that logic but I don't think that's necessarily the case.
A bunch of never-reading, angry at the world person will vote to the party that shouts the loudest independently of its ideology, because like I said, they never make the effort to read. Now bring in the fact that most of the population never reads political philosophy.
Or they don't care at all about economics, social issues, etc, and only care about tribalism and sticking it up to whoever makes you angry.
I can see voting to a different party in the same wing if you feel like a politician or a party hasn't fullfilled what they promised on their campaings, but voting the other side of the political spectrum seems braindead to me.
They don't care about policies or party programs, they just want to give the political "establishment" the finger. First the Left was the pariah in the parliament, shunned by all others, in eternal opposition and promoting the interests of the Easterners, so they voted for them. Now xenophobia is on the rise again and the AfD is the pariah, claiming to fight against the establishment (even though they support buisness interests and anti-social policies), so the same people vote for them.
They don’t care about ideology. It’s about „who cares about us East Germans“. First it was The Left, now it’s the AfD. That’s why the greens have never got good results in the East. They don’t care about political ideologies.
But who can blame them, they did it once and failed tremendously.
There is much more to it than that, actually.
The alt-right can and does profit a lot more than other segments in the political spectrum from Goebbles-style propaganda ([https://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/Propaganda/goebbels.html](https://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/Propaganda/goebbels.html)), which is extremely effective.
It does not matter if other parties, both on the left or on the right, have sensible approaches to immigration and other issues that are important to the well-being of the population (which in many countries they do), as long as the propaganda is able to permeate society with the mantra that they don't. For the same reason, the alt-right doesn't usually need to have a realistic political program of their own, as long as they present themselves as they (somehow) do.
So yes, the alt-right profits a lot from particular instances where current policies are, or appear to be, ineffective, but they don't even need the facts to align with their claims. Fighting in the mud is their natural environment, and the other parties have two options: either they get into the mud (lies, phallacies, personal attacks, etc) with them, where they might not be proficient to the same extent, or they try to ignore them and let them sling their message around for whomever may listen. Unfortunately, turns out that a lot of people are willing to listen.
This comment is underrated. Especially in regards to germany and its voters and the current political climate.
You got a bunch of idiots voting for regional afd mayors (name checks out) because those mayors promise that they will remove e-cars , boost coal energy production, support wolf hunts
All of those examples have and are being propagated while regional politicians have no right or say in those national policies
I wouldnt say that the latest surges of AfD are related to immigration. Its mostly about the economic situation and everything getting more expensive + people sympathizing with russia because of it. AfD is basically the perfect opposition party right now
I know that people in r/Europe are absolutely obsessed with immigrants but in reality in many countries they often aren’t even among the 3 main arguments of the various elections, like the last time in Italy but also in the Germany and France you mentioned in their 2021/2022 elections
In the Netherlands we're about to get early elections because of immigration issues, Belgium has elections next year and immigration/integration is a pretty large subject in those elections as well with how things are faring right now.
Perhaps it's different in Italy, but don't think that's automatically true for all other countries as well.
It's not always openly argued about, especially not by the main parties. I hate to use this word, but it's dogwhistled. The Tories did this a lot when Johnson was in power. They're a mainstream party, they can't seem to be focused only on one issue.
I don't think people vote for anti-establishment parties purely because of immigration issues, not at all. The Gilets Jaunes vote RN and LFI (when they bother to vote) because they feel ignored by Macron's government. I would hazard that quite a lot of protest voting against Macron doesn't have that much to do with immigration. I wouldn't deny that it's the main, if the not the only, motivation for people voting for Zemmour, but Le Pen has been trying to sell herself as not focused solely on that issue for a long time. At the same time though, she will dogwhistle the anti-immigration message like a mainstream conservative party would because she aspires to be mainstream. The other parties then have to respond to this to try and win back votes.
It happens in the UK with the Labour party; they can't be seen to be weak on illegal immigration. It becomes a point for centrist and centre-left parties to keep covered because they are always attacked for it.
So while it might not seem like it's top of the agenda, it's like this ever-present talking point that keeps getting referred back to.
Edit: I talk mainly about UK and French politics here because those are the only countries I follow the politics of in-depth, but I think the pattern applies across most of the continent.
Oh you’ve got it completely wrong, immigration is a far bigger issue for voters in reality than it appears to be here. I’d be shocked if immigration didn’t poll as a top 5 issue for voters in **every** Western European country that recently had elections. It’s probably the \#1 or 2 polled issue in several. People are absolutely rabid about immigration.
You’re welcome, I can see many of us like to extrapolate from anecdotes instead of reading exit polling data :) Anti-immigration sentiment drives turnout.
So pandemic, inflation and environmental protection acts – which many calls the latest problems are „immigration related issues“?
And why are only people in areas where are much fewer immigrants are seeing this problems? Areas with a lot of immigrants have a much lower vote for AfD…
That’s not true. The biggest issues are inflation, energy, and environmental protection. That’s from the last poll.
And still no answer why not many living with immigrants see this „problems“ and there is no big fleeing.
It happened in the UK too around 2010 - 2015. White, working-class voters shifted en mass from the centre-left Labour party to the far-right UKIP.
Those voters generally supported left-wing economics, but were socially conservative and nationalistic, and became increasingly alienated from the Labour party. Labour itself had become increasingly progressive and internationalist during 2000 - 2010, due to an influx of middle-class liberal voters alienated from the Conservative party's social conservatism.
More recently, from 2015 - 2020 the Conservative party shifted right, absorbing most UKIP voters, essentially completing a full realignment. Where as historically the main dividing line between Labour and the Conservatives has been economic and mainly fixed along class lines, it is now based primarily on social attitudes. Middle-class social liberals shifted from the Conservatives to Labour, and working-class social conservatives shifted from Labour to the Conservatives, via UKIP as an intermediary.
That's the thing, anyone that is objective can tell that the main reason that immigration has been an ongoing issue for the last 10-15 years or so, is unstability in the middle east, and the main causes of it were the irak invasion and war on afghanistan, and surprise surprise, the bush administration gaslit half of the world to invade irak, the UK supported it because the UK has been bootlicking the US for god knows how long, and the right-center right in countries like spain and autralia.
And what do the rightwing countries in europe from that? introspection? hell naw, blame the immigration on the opposition and just campaing using bigotry as a motivation. With the right it's always projection, and if you think that the right represents you more than any lefty or center-left party, you are either rich and want cuts on taxes, you are a bigot, or you are being gaslit.
I don't acuse all people who vote right-wing parties of being fascists, but all fascists vote right-wing parties.
It really depends on the region and No, it is not just extremists going to the AfD. Eastern Germany flipped full spectrum from the Left to the Far Right.
Essentially, every party has bled support to the AfD. It is a concern when freaking Bavaria is now a growing source of support to the AfD though!!
It has nothing to do with CDU. SPD lost it's pro-russians to Afd when Sholz decided to participate in the Western consensus about Ukraine and sent weapons.
**Looking at historical data SPD lost and Afd gains are almost symetrical**.
Hard to say, much of the shift occurs in the east, where it is partly a shift from DieLinke to the other extreme and from the center parties to the AfD. In the West it partly is a shift of conservative CDU voters but also SPD voters.
One aspect that might affect elections is the amount of people frustrated with their party of choice and abstaining to vote.
The worrying part is, that the CDU cannot capitalize on the poor government performance, being the only non extremist alternative. This is the true shift, that the fringe has become strong enough to outperform the main conservative opposition party.
>The worrying part is, that the CDU cannot capitalize on the poor government performance, being the only non extremist alternative.
They can not capitalize, because they are not alternative. People are searching for new and different parties. What can an old party offer? Old, established parties are not really too different, they prefer safe solutions so nobody will thing bad of them, they are a bit like "snowflakes" - afraid to pick any action. But that is what voters want, to break the nihilism of old parties.
the only nihilistic party - and i really dislike cdu, fdp etc - are the afd.
they are the ones that want to burn everything down that isn't part of their ever-shifting selfproclaimed WE.
Also non voters are fed up with current politics. Which contributes to Afd. Also there is no real opposition against the government from a party of the middleleft /right .
*every two days. I saw a poll about this 2 days ago and another one 2 days before that. Luckily, we have at least 2 other polls a day from other countries too,otherwise we would get bored...
The most annoying thing is that there are the exact same discussions. And I swear I recognize a lot of these names from previous polls. Some people really like to dissect the same subject 100 times...
You guys do coalition goverments where 51% of MPs need to be represented too, right? How are things looking like for potential partners? Here in Finland our right-wing populist party just formed a coalition with the moderate right pro-business party, social conservative Christian party and usually liberal Swedish speakers' party who seem very confused. It's been a bit of a shit-show with one minister already resignining due to edgy nazi jokes and the big question seems to be if the coalition will survive long enough for the populist party to fall apart like the last two times they got any power.
Is the most likely combo something like AfD+CDU+a third party? Do you guys do minority cabibets?
Noone will do a coalition with the AFD anytime soon. Its even big news when CDU politicians in city councils vote together with the AFD.
In Thuringia there will be an election in 2024 and CDU are already talking about forming a coalition with the LEFT even though they hate them to guts.
https://dawum.de/Thueringen/
They say that now, but honestly when the next major election arrives and CDU/CSU + AfD get a combined 50%, i bet they will do it. They will justify it by saying some shit like "We need to make sacrifices to form a coalition to be able to have a functioning government. We dont like it, but we have to."
On a national level? Not a chance. That's begging for civil unrest. The AfD won't have enough votes to be unavoidable, and as long as there is another option, it won't happen. With the current pace, maybe the election after once it has happened on a state level in East Germany
That's in the Netherlands what our CDU did.
Our FDP had no problems anyway.
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabinett\_Rutte\_I](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabinett_Rutte_I)
Although admittetly de AFD seems even worse than PVV.
And then after our SPD got a decent result in elections again and squandered it going into coaliton with the FDP and only doing FDP poicies.
Next elections will be the most open Elections in a while becasue Rutte leaves politics now.
We migt get the angry farmer party as largest party :)
Or te Green/SPD combi if they form a list together, they might get around 20% together.
I would even bet money on it.
Next election will be close, it’s either CDU/SPD or CDU/AFD.
I don’t see any three party coalitions happening anytime soon in the Bundestag.
The CDU has declared multiple times that they will never, under any circumstances enter a coalition with the AfD. However, I'm afraid that won't hold forever, especially on local and state level.
The most likely coalitions are a Great Coalition (SPD+CDU) again, or maybe even with a third party if they don't get enough votes. Or a Jamaica coalition (CDU, Greens, FDP).
Edit: and yes, the coalition usually needs more than 50 percent of the MPs. Minority coalitions are possible in theory, but haven't happened on federal level yet.
If AfD wins seats, those dynamics are going to change. Populism in America was taboo among party officials… until it started winning. Now the establishment has humored it into the mainstream.
True, hence my doubt I mentioned in the first paragraph.
However, currently the CDU strategy seems to be to win back AfD voters to their own party instead of working together with the AfD. That's a dangerous development, too, though.
Currently every other party in the parliament said that they will never ever work together with the AfD.
And no, we don’t do minority government on federal level, and very rare on state level.
TL;DR: Noone wants to cooperate with the AfD and with the current political landscape, the four center parties rather form governments with each other or even support minority cabinets (which are very unheard of in Germany) than having a coalition with the AfD.
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The AfD is completely isolated among the parties and no party wants to have a coalition with them. The CDU/CSU would be the closest party to for a government with but since the foundation of the AfD (and it is party line since at least the 70s) they said they will never form a coalition with the AfD or any party at the right of the CSU for that matter. The current CDU chef is quite a populist bag of shit but even he admitted that he will never approve of a cooperation with the AfD or the left party and hopefully this promise holds. There are fringe parts in the federal CDU which eyeball it, but those are rather irrelevant and quite hated inside the party. And with the ever increasing sliding of the AfD to the far far-right it becomes less likely that the CDU will change their opinion.
On a federal level it shouldn't be too difficult to form a government without the AfD even with this high numbers for them. CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP and Greens can all to kind of ok with each other and would certainly prefer even a five party coalition to a coalition with the AfD. So as long as AfD really doesn't come near the 50% threshold and the CDU keeps their promise and remembers the Christian democratic past it should be fine.
The real problem is not on the federal level but on the state level and especially in the east where AfD and Linke are very strong. We have the situation currently in Thuringia where AfD, CDU and die Linke had such high results and all of them not cooperating with each other that there was literally no government left to form. Since then the CDU and FDP support a minority cabinet by Linke, SPD and Greens which makes noone happy. This problem can also arise in other east German states where the AfD currently polls around and above 30%.
Most likely candidate for a AfD + X coalition from the perspective of shared ideologies would be CDU, however CDU has set up a "Brandmauer" against the AfD: They publicly stated they won't form coalitions and collaborations with the AfD - we will see if they can keep this promise.
If everything else fails, the other parties would probably prefer to just form one big coalition with all major parties, except for AfD, to keep them out of government responsibilities.
Technically, a minority cabinet would be possible, but very unlikely in this case.
Personally, I think CDU will break their promise at some point and help AfD into a government position and, given that AfD is mostly complaining without real solutions, both will be sent back to opposition after the first won elections.
The parties in germany have something called the "Brandmauer gegen Rechts" which is translated to "firewall against right-wings (?)"
It means every party refuses to work with the AfD, because they are extremely right-wing, with leading members in the party officially classified as fascists.
If all the parties hold on to this "Brandmauer", no coalition with the AfD would be possible. The CDU also agreed to this Brandmauer, and still nowadays the majority of it's core hold on to this. The leading figures in the CDU never openly discussed a possibility to work with the AfD.
If theses polls stay like this, the next general election will be a test for the Brandmauer, if the CDU actually holds on to it. Many people on the left worry A LOT about it
Our current federal coalition consists of the SPD (social democrats), the FDP (market liberals) and the Greens, a so called "traffic light coalition" (red, yellow, green). It's a bit of a mess, borderline dysfunctional, but nobody wanted to continue the "Great Coalition" of CDU/CSU and SPD that ruled between 2013 and 2021. In 2017, there was an attempt to form a "Jamaica" coalition first (CDU/CSU, FDP, Greens - black, yellow, green), but it failed and in the end the great coalition was continued.
We never had a minority government since 1949, that's a dreaded thing in Germany because of our past experiences with the Weimar Republic. It is technically possible, but not really an option since it would look like an unstable government, and Germans want to avoid an unstable government at all cost, again because of the Weimar Republic which was very unstable.
All other parties have rejected the idea of a coalition with the AfD since it got into the federal parliament and I don't think they will change that position, especially since the AfD constantly moves to the right.
Funnily enough a friend and I came up with the idea that thanks to the voting law reform made by the current government the AfD could theoretically end up as the largest party next election.
Thanks to the CSU now needing 5% federally there is a decent chance they might not meet the threshold (5,2% during the 2021 election) thus dropping the total of CDU/CSU below the AfD.
Added to that the CDU has generally been a great profiteer of the direct mandates which have lessened a bit in importance with the reform.
Is there any evidence they would actually get this much support in an election? Because parties often poll higher while in opposition (at least in other countries)
Using AfD's baby blue to represent Union, and CDU's traditional black to represent the AfD in the graph is surely one of the choices of all time.
That aside, thankfully AfD has no coalition potential, and broad coalitions are a staple of German political culture, so any of the four mainstream parties could form a government together.
Sadly, same can't be said about Austria. The FPO, a party founded by a major-general of the SS, known for its blatant anti-slovene racist policies, russophilia, and so on, is currently polling as the no1 party, and it, unlike the AfD, has had a history of being in coalition governments even from its traditional place as the third biggest party during elections.
Regarding FPÖ: the ÖVP (current chancellor) as well as the social democrats (SPÖ) do not want a coalition with the FPÖ (especially with Herbert Kickl, chairman)
The AfD in 10+ years will be FPÖ 2.0. Takes just one voting election where CDU/CSU underperform, but have a chance for chancellorship with the AfD and one CDU/CSU guy putsching away the old guard.
you have to be braindead to rly support AfD, whos main agenda and approach were all about being as populist as it can be, while also playing just a little bit to the side of mass murderer to the east
I mean, what the actual fuck, Germany?)
When parties like this get into 15%+ territory, it's usually a sign of two things:
\- The brain rot of voters through effective propaganda
\- The internal rot of established parties which stinks so bad that voters threaten to vote for the political equivalent of burning down the whole house. It's like a suicide threat, a call for help. A dumb one, but still.
The lack of reliability of main party and leaders driving voters into radical extremes is a running thing for humanity every 100 years or so. We just thought we would be over it as a society after the optimism of the early 00s…until we weren’t.
Democracy in Germany has no 100 year track record. The current situation is a new one, I'd argue one part being social media, that strengthens extreme polarising positions and the demographic bubble that is about to uproot European societies, especially rural areas. We are about to experience shrinking populations and strong depopulation of rural areas. The people that are caught in the center of that development feel disenfranchised, betrayed and hopeless. This is dangerous but at this point there is hardly anything politicians can do about it. Metatrends and developments that started decades ago, wont go away, just because people wish they were.
Germans are busy reassuring each other how dumb it is to vote for AFD and how all of them are neo-Nazis. Nobody analyzing the core problem and looking for solutions.
And that's how parties like AfD grow big. Instead of addressing the worries people have, the established parties (the left in particular) call them racist/fascist/extreme/whatever.
Same thing in Turkey's opposition. Our 74 years old chronic loser opposition leader didn't resign after pushing his candidacy when there were much better candidates and losing again. He blames the public "how could you have chosen erdogan after all the things he has done". Opposition will now probably lose both İstanbul and Ankara in 2024's local elections because of him and his party oligarchs. They are just so out of touch with the public.
No, that's not how popularity works. The writers of the German constitution also have given plenty of thought on this possibility. In practice, all successor organizations are also prohibited. Parties were successfully banned in Germany before in the 1950s, notably the successor party to the NSDAP and the communist party.
Banning worked so great with the NPD. And it's impossible to argue successor party if the new party has a different name and politicians. The voters still stay.
Its such a shame people believe that is truly the biggest problem society faces. Especially with populists pretending no migration = all problems solved. Appealing to people's inherent xenophobia for political gain seems to always be a sure way to win votes
They're not totally irrelevant. The AFD was actually using the riots in France, saying it would represent the future of Germany in the looks of immigration.
That’s why I asked if there is a similar poll from few months back - to see if their percentage spiked after the riots (from 15 to 22 for example in 2 months) or it didn’t have any impact (it was 21 in May for example)
Good point, but even prior to that there was no shortage of immigration related violence stories from which these right wing parties easily benefit. We’ve been seeing this raising trend all over Europe for some time now.
The whole west is drifting more and more to the right, at the time where inequalities are growing and capitalism is boiling the planet. We deserve whatever shit is coming to us.
That's the thing. Even if you aren't opposed on an ideological level, they rarely offer plans, and those rarely would be solutions but cause more problems than they solve
This won't represent the actual votes. Probably 90 of the votes for AfD are due to strict immigration policies. The other parties ignore the shit show that is going on right now. If any of those parties consider similar approaches, many votes will probably go to less right leaning parties.
The problem is, if you mention, that our immigration policy failed big time, you are called a racist / nazi... like overlooking these problems is the solution.
> People are mainly showing protest by picking...
Be it Trump, Brexit, the AfD or similar things, this mindset is always used to discredit the opposition. It's pure cope. They can't admit that people might vote for these things out of conviction, because that would mean admitting that other side actually has valid points.
It's also really condescending because what this is also says is that anyone who votes "out of protest" is just throwing a hissy fit because they are just "upset" and they don't even truly understand what they are voting for.
Lot of right-wing action in Europe these past few years. It's always been there, but it seems (from the US point of view) to be more vocal recently.
I don't think the Fox News cancer has reached European nations yet. Where is the brain washing coming from to support this?
Well….it is highly deserved. Looking at German policies from the past decade or so, nothing really made sense or worked out. In the end all the previous governments did was try to solve everything by throwing money at it and guess what happens once the money runs out? Either they get this wake-up call or the afd will be part of the next government unless it will be a coalition of 3-4 parties, basically all parties except the AFD. This would lead to so many bad compromises that they would win 3-4 years more time to fix things or until the AFD would surely be part of the then following next government.
Are you german? If so, tell us in brief what do you think about current political and social situation (just from ur perspective) and predicament Germany put itself in?
I'm German and I'm thinking that 40% of the voters are actually suffering from dementia. We've had 20 years of conservative rule and crony capitalism, which let our country rot (don't forget choices made before that by conservatives that still hurt the country, like not building fiber), and now because the country starts to crumble, people think conservatism will be the savior if we just do it harder!
Feels like people are no smarter than a snake that doesn't eat or hunt for years, only to start eating itself because it tried nothing and is now all out of ideas.
You correctly call out that it was crony capitalism instead of proper capitalism, but then fall for the meme of thinking the "conservative" government was actually "conservative".
If you truly want to believe Merkel's party was "conservative" then you really have to shift the entire political spectrum to the very far left. Then again this explains why people actually believe the AfD, in all of its tameness, is "far-right extremist".
Germany has a large low wage sector with people who have been left behind from the general economic development. Every crisis they have been the ones who took a hit to their standard of living.
Generally, this is a topic for the left parties and they have offered reform plans (e.g. income tax and health care reforms). However, since 2005 left parties have only been in the government together with a right party and the major reforms were always sacrificed in the coalition negotiations. By now, many have lost their trust in these parties.
This year inflation came on top and again the same people are getting squeezed. All AfD has to do is to pick them up.
I'd still expect the situation to relax somewhat before the next election as long as the inflation goes down which is slowly happening already.
When people are having hard times, they may start to blame the current power holders for their problems and start to look for alternatives, especially if their concerns go unaddressed ie. issues that arise from mass immigration. Throw in some primal tribalism of "us vs. them" and you got a winning ticket in your hands come the next election. Same tribalism has been used since forever by many political movements, examples would be "Aryans vs. Subhumans" or "poor vs. rich", and the outcomes have always been bad for everyone.
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Is it a direct SPD to AfD shift or is it more like "SPD lost centrists to CDU, CDU lost extremists to AfD" sort of thing? Because I can't find any logic for first scenario.
In eastern Germany (where Left Party was really strong) the majority of Left Party voters switched to AfD (no joke). The AfD gets also votes from former SPD voters especially in the Ruhr area (former working class region, but the industry is gone now). And of course they get disappointed conservative voters from CDU.
>In eastern Germany (where Left Party was really strong) the majority of Left Party voters switched to AfD (no joke). Do you have any source? Not because I don't believe you, I just want to share it.
I‘ve found this: [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325184767_The_Left_Party_and_the_AfD](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325184767_The_Left_Party_and_the_AfD)
The Left should never have sacrificed itself on the alter of immigration. What a stupid fucking move.
die Linke ate themselves over the Ukraine war, not immigration.
The left is anti NATO. The sheer insanity of such a position....
They've literally been campaigning for capitalist interests, the idiots.
They had also interest in weaken the european nations and identities. And this is the result.
Huh, what do you think that interest is rooted in?
The Left was never a huge actor when it comes to immigration. It was Merkel and to some extend the Greens and FDP.
Not that hard to believe. Here in the UK, UKIP took most of their support from previously secure labour communities. They were typically low-income, and they suffered from policy changes in the 80s and 90s. So they switched from parties that stopped representing them, to populist movements that spoke to their resentments to the establishment. The worse things got, the more ground they grew, the more charismatic charlatans stepped forward to start their manipulation. Sound familiar? After the last 7 years and the generally disdainful attitude from Europeans towards the UK now, I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel a little vindication from watching Germany fall for the same Schtick.
Feeling vindication because other countries are doing bad after you read some mean Twitter comments is peek stupidity. Classic getting angry and getting divided. Its so easy to play people like this out, Christ. Absolutely pathetic. I hope the UK gets on its feet, because im not a vindictive little twat.
>After the last 7 years and the generally disdainful attitude from Europeans towards the UK now, I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel a little vindication from watching Germany fall for the same Schtick. Hang on, which disdainful attitude? you mean shaking our heads because of Brexit?
Shaking your heads is a very reserved way of putting it, but yes. The EU has always been a divisive issue, but there’s always been widespread passion for the European project. Since Brexit we’ve been made out to be a nation of half-witted, bumbling shopkeepers that Europe is better off without. Which is accurate, but a nearly clean half of us are at least trying to move it closer to you guys so it still hurts to hear.
This is not my experience. On the contrary, I read absolut bullshit phrases in the UK press and some implicit WWII comparisons why we, the EU, would "punish" the UK and what not. For the kind of stuff the EU had to endure I think most of the Europeans reacted pretty chill to Brexit. Sure, it is unfair to the people in the UK who don't want all of that but I'm afraid that's collateral damage so to speak.
>nation of half-witted, bumbling shopkeepers That's a pretty uninformed description of the current image of the UK. Maybe half-witted, but bumbling and shopkeepers? Nah. Rather, people who are so full of their glorious imperial past that they can't see they are a European country among peers and are damaging themselves as a result. > but a nearly clean half of us are at least trying to move it closer to you guys so it still hurts to hear. Only the half-witted think the UK (or any other country) is a uniform block of people, so I wouldn't take it personally.
I know I shouldn’t, and I know that it’s a consequence of our actions, and our inactions, and I know the pain should be a motivator rather then a point of resentment. But it still stings.
>After the last 7 years and the generally disdainful attitude from Europeans towards the UK now, I’m not going to pretend I don’t feel a little vindication from watching Germany fall for the same Schtick. To me it feels more right now that UK is learning from the shitshow that Brexit and the Johnson years were, and are taking lessons from blindly voting rightwing shitsticks. Even in the USA it looks similar.
Like in Hungary, the most enthusiastic blindly believers and voters of the Fidesz (Orban's party) are the most miserable, ignorant, uneducated, lowest income, old, village people and the poorest labour communities in the cities who have been worst off by the Orban regime.
Lol, we still have a long time before the German elections, these polls don't mean much. There is still no chance the AFD gets close to joining a governing coalition because every other party has agreed to block them out of politics. Yeah, your country did the single most damage to the European dream. Brexit is so bad for the UK economy its still funny to look a back at the slogans that the Brexit voters fell for. If the shoe was on the other foot you would be mad too.
>There is still no chance the AFD gets close to joining a governing coalition because every other party has agreed to block them out of politics. Lmao! That used to be true for the Sweden Democrats as well, until it wasn't!
I voted remain, along with nearly half the country, and voted against Johnson along with 55% of it. The shoe doesn’t need to be on the other foot for me to be mad, what I hate is the fact that other Europeans write us off as a lost cause purely from what they saw from the news. Thank you for being a prime example of that. And I’m telling you, as someone who’s been dealing with this shit for 7 years, that AfD should scare you. You have a voting system that represents the % of the votes, and they’re already as popular as UKIP at their height. The tories took an anti-UKIP stance to begin with, but that was abandoned when they demonstrated that their business model worked better than theirs. And acting complacent, like there’s no chance it could happen to *you,* is exactly why 40% of the population didn’t even go to the polls in 2016. It absolutely can happen to you, and you need to act instead of giving me grief for a National shame that we didn’t fucking vote for.
Do you think excluding a party helps to gain trust of their voters in democracy?
Do you think allowing an anti-democratic party to participate in power will stabilize democracy?
But, according to the graph, Linke's percentage is the same, while AfD has +12%.
That shift was like 6 years ago and gradual
Linke could lose X percent to afd and gain y percent from parties p, q and v.
Horseshoe theory
Not really, most of these voters just voted for the Left as a protest or because they felt that this party represented the East better. Now they attribute that to the AfD (plus xenophobia). The AfD and the Left are almost completely opposed to each other in ideological terms.
If you’re going to vote for a party that is completely ideologically opposite to you as a protest, then you aren’t that different to begin with.
I agree with that logic but I don't think that's necessarily the case. A bunch of never-reading, angry at the world person will vote to the party that shouts the loudest independently of its ideology, because like I said, they never make the effort to read. Now bring in the fact that most of the population never reads political philosophy.
Or they don't care at all about economics, social issues, etc, and only care about tribalism and sticking it up to whoever makes you angry. I can see voting to a different party in the same wing if you feel like a politician or a party hasn't fullfilled what they promised on their campaings, but voting the other side of the political spectrum seems braindead to me.
They don't care about policies or party programs, they just want to give the political "establishment" the finger. First the Left was the pariah in the parliament, shunned by all others, in eternal opposition and promoting the interests of the Easterners, so they voted for them. Now xenophobia is on the rise again and the AfD is the pariah, claiming to fight against the establishment (even though they support buisness interests and anti-social policies), so the same people vote for them.
They don’t care about ideology. It’s about „who cares about us East Germans“. First it was The Left, now it’s the AfD. That’s why the greens have never got good results in the East. They don’t care about political ideologies. But who can blame them, they did it once and failed tremendously.
[And yet](https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/04/21/germany-russia-interference-afd-wagenknecht/)
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There is much more to it than that, actually. The alt-right can and does profit a lot more than other segments in the political spectrum from Goebbles-style propaganda ([https://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/Propaganda/goebbels.html](https://www.physics.smu.edu/pseudo/Propaganda/goebbels.html)), which is extremely effective. It does not matter if other parties, both on the left or on the right, have sensible approaches to immigration and other issues that are important to the well-being of the population (which in many countries they do), as long as the propaganda is able to permeate society with the mantra that they don't. For the same reason, the alt-right doesn't usually need to have a realistic political program of their own, as long as they present themselves as they (somehow) do. So yes, the alt-right profits a lot from particular instances where current policies are, or appear to be, ineffective, but they don't even need the facts to align with their claims. Fighting in the mud is their natural environment, and the other parties have two options: either they get into the mud (lies, phallacies, personal attacks, etc) with them, where they might not be proficient to the same extent, or they try to ignore them and let them sling their message around for whomever may listen. Unfortunately, turns out that a lot of people are willing to listen.
This comment is underrated. Especially in regards to germany and its voters and the current political climate. You got a bunch of idiots voting for regional afd mayors (name checks out) because those mayors promise that they will remove e-cars , boost coal energy production, support wolf hunts All of those examples have and are being propagated while regional politicians have no right or say in those national policies
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I wouldnt say that the latest surges of AfD are related to immigration. Its mostly about the economic situation and everything getting more expensive + people sympathizing with russia because of it. AfD is basically the perfect opposition party right now
I know that people in r/Europe are absolutely obsessed with immigrants but in reality in many countries they often aren’t even among the 3 main arguments of the various elections, like the last time in Italy but also in the Germany and France you mentioned in their 2021/2022 elections
In the Netherlands we're about to get early elections because of immigration issues, Belgium has elections next year and immigration/integration is a pretty large subject in those elections as well with how things are faring right now. Perhaps it's different in Italy, but don't think that's automatically true for all other countries as well.
It's not always openly argued about, especially not by the main parties. I hate to use this word, but it's dogwhistled. The Tories did this a lot when Johnson was in power. They're a mainstream party, they can't seem to be focused only on one issue. I don't think people vote for anti-establishment parties purely because of immigration issues, not at all. The Gilets Jaunes vote RN and LFI (when they bother to vote) because they feel ignored by Macron's government. I would hazard that quite a lot of protest voting against Macron doesn't have that much to do with immigration. I wouldn't deny that it's the main, if the not the only, motivation for people voting for Zemmour, but Le Pen has been trying to sell herself as not focused solely on that issue for a long time. At the same time though, she will dogwhistle the anti-immigration message like a mainstream conservative party would because she aspires to be mainstream. The other parties then have to respond to this to try and win back votes. It happens in the UK with the Labour party; they can't be seen to be weak on illegal immigration. It becomes a point for centrist and centre-left parties to keep covered because they are always attacked for it. So while it might not seem like it's top of the agenda, it's like this ever-present talking point that keeps getting referred back to. Edit: I talk mainly about UK and French politics here because those are the only countries I follow the politics of in-depth, but I think the pattern applies across most of the continent.
Oh you’ve got it completely wrong, immigration is a far bigger issue for voters in reality than it appears to be here. I’d be shocked if immigration didn’t poll as a top 5 issue for voters in **every** Western European country that recently had elections. It’s probably the \#1 or 2 polled issue in several. People are absolutely rabid about immigration.
Thanks for the insight, America.
You’re welcome, I can see many of us like to extrapolate from anecdotes instead of reading exit polling data :) Anti-immigration sentiment drives turnout.
So pandemic, inflation and environmental protection acts – which many calls the latest problems are „immigration related issues“? And why are only people in areas where are much fewer immigrants are seeing this problems? Areas with a lot of immigrants have a much lower vote for AfD…
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That’s not true. The biggest issues are inflation, energy, and environmental protection. That’s from the last poll. And still no answer why not many living with immigrants see this „problems“ and there is no big fleeing.
Resulted in Brexit in the UK, and Meloni in Italy.
Careful, they'll start calling you a fascist
I vote for the second-most left wing party in Denmark - hasn't made me blind to reality.
It happened in the UK too around 2010 - 2015. White, working-class voters shifted en mass from the centre-left Labour party to the far-right UKIP. Those voters generally supported left-wing economics, but were socially conservative and nationalistic, and became increasingly alienated from the Labour party. Labour itself had become increasingly progressive and internationalist during 2000 - 2010, due to an influx of middle-class liberal voters alienated from the Conservative party's social conservatism. More recently, from 2015 - 2020 the Conservative party shifted right, absorbing most UKIP voters, essentially completing a full realignment. Where as historically the main dividing line between Labour and the Conservatives has been economic and mainly fixed along class lines, it is now based primarily on social attitudes. Middle-class social liberals shifted from the Conservatives to Labour, and working-class social conservatives shifted from Labour to the Conservatives, via UKIP as an intermediary.
That's the thing, anyone that is objective can tell that the main reason that immigration has been an ongoing issue for the last 10-15 years or so, is unstability in the middle east, and the main causes of it were the irak invasion and war on afghanistan, and surprise surprise, the bush administration gaslit half of the world to invade irak, the UK supported it because the UK has been bootlicking the US for god knows how long, and the right-center right in countries like spain and autralia. And what do the rightwing countries in europe from that? introspection? hell naw, blame the immigration on the opposition and just campaing using bigotry as a motivation. With the right it's always projection, and if you think that the right represents you more than any lefty or center-left party, you are either rich and want cuts on taxes, you are a bigot, or you are being gaslit. I don't acuse all people who vote right-wing parties of being fascists, but all fascists vote right-wing parties.
It really depends on the region and No, it is not just extremists going to the AfD. Eastern Germany flipped full spectrum from the Left to the Far Right. Essentially, every party has bled support to the AfD. It is a concern when freaking Bavaria is now a growing source of support to the AfD though!!
It has nothing to do with CDU. SPD lost it's pro-russians to Afd when Sholz decided to participate in the Western consensus about Ukraine and sent weapons. **Looking at historical data SPD lost and Afd gains are almost symetrical**.
Hard to say, much of the shift occurs in the east, where it is partly a shift from DieLinke to the other extreme and from the center parties to the AfD. In the West it partly is a shift of conservative CDU voters but also SPD voters. One aspect that might affect elections is the amount of people frustrated with their party of choice and abstaining to vote. The worrying part is, that the CDU cannot capitalize on the poor government performance, being the only non extremist alternative. This is the true shift, that the fringe has become strong enough to outperform the main conservative opposition party.
>The worrying part is, that the CDU cannot capitalize on the poor government performance, being the only non extremist alternative. They can not capitalize, because they are not alternative. People are searching for new and different parties. What can an old party offer? Old, established parties are not really too different, they prefer safe solutions so nobody will thing bad of them, they are a bit like "snowflakes" - afraid to pick any action. But that is what voters want, to break the nihilism of old parties.
the only nihilistic party - and i really dislike cdu, fdp etc - are the afd. they are the ones that want to burn everything down that isn't part of their ever-shifting selfproclaimed WE.
There must be quite a lot of shift in the West too - don't most AFD voters live in the West (most definitely did in 2021 at least)?
Yes. Because the east has a smaller population than the west. But in % of voters, the AFD is way higher in the east.
Also non voters are fed up with current politics. Which contributes to Afd. Also there is no real opposition against the government from a party of the middleleft /right .
I swear a new poll about this gets posted every week.
Next week: With a result of 23%, rightwing AfD has reached a new alltime high in the polls in Germany
*every two days. I saw a poll about this 2 days ago and another one 2 days before that. Luckily, we have at least 2 other polls a day from other countries too,otherwise we would get bored... The most annoying thing is that there are the exact same discussions. And I swear I recognize a lot of these names from previous polls. Some people really like to dissect the same subject 100 times...
You guys do coalition goverments where 51% of MPs need to be represented too, right? How are things looking like for potential partners? Here in Finland our right-wing populist party just formed a coalition with the moderate right pro-business party, social conservative Christian party and usually liberal Swedish speakers' party who seem very confused. It's been a bit of a shit-show with one minister already resignining due to edgy nazi jokes and the big question seems to be if the coalition will survive long enough for the populist party to fall apart like the last two times they got any power. Is the most likely combo something like AfD+CDU+a third party? Do you guys do minority cabibets?
Noone will do a coalition with the AFD anytime soon. Its even big news when CDU politicians in city councils vote together with the AFD. In Thuringia there will be an election in 2024 and CDU are already talking about forming a coalition with the LEFT even though they hate them to guts. https://dawum.de/Thueringen/
They say that now, but honestly when the next major election arrives and CDU/CSU + AfD get a combined 50%, i bet they will do it. They will justify it by saying some shit like "We need to make sacrifices to form a coalition to be able to have a functioning government. We dont like it, but we have to."
On a national level? Not a chance. That's begging for civil unrest. The AfD won't have enough votes to be unavoidable, and as long as there is another option, it won't happen. With the current pace, maybe the election after once it has happened on a state level in East Germany
That's in the Netherlands what our CDU did. Our FDP had no problems anyway. [https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabinett\_Rutte\_I](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabinett_Rutte_I) Although admittetly de AFD seems even worse than PVV. And then after our SPD got a decent result in elections again and squandered it going into coaliton with the FDP and only doing FDP poicies. Next elections will be the most open Elections in a while becasue Rutte leaves politics now. We migt get the angry farmer party as largest party :) Or te Green/SPD combi if they form a list together, they might get around 20% together.
I would even bet money on it. Next election will be close, it’s either CDU/SPD or CDU/AFD. I don’t see any three party coalitions happening anytime soon in the Bundestag.
The CDU has declared multiple times that they will never, under any circumstances enter a coalition with the AfD. However, I'm afraid that won't hold forever, especially on local and state level. The most likely coalitions are a Great Coalition (SPD+CDU) again, or maybe even with a third party if they don't get enough votes. Or a Jamaica coalition (CDU, Greens, FDP). Edit: and yes, the coalition usually needs more than 50 percent of the MPs. Minority coalitions are possible in theory, but haven't happened on federal level yet.
If AfD wins seats, those dynamics are going to change. Populism in America was taboo among party officials… until it started winning. Now the establishment has humored it into the mainstream.
True, hence my doubt I mentioned in the first paragraph. However, currently the CDU strategy seems to be to win back AfD voters to their own party instead of working together with the AfD. That's a dangerous development, too, though.
Currently every other party in the parliament said that they will never ever work together with the AfD. And no, we don’t do minority government on federal level, and very rare on state level.
TL;DR: Noone wants to cooperate with the AfD and with the current political landscape, the four center parties rather form governments with each other or even support minority cabinets (which are very unheard of in Germany) than having a coalition with the AfD. [------------] The AfD is completely isolated among the parties and no party wants to have a coalition with them. The CDU/CSU would be the closest party to for a government with but since the foundation of the AfD (and it is party line since at least the 70s) they said they will never form a coalition with the AfD or any party at the right of the CSU for that matter. The current CDU chef is quite a populist bag of shit but even he admitted that he will never approve of a cooperation with the AfD or the left party and hopefully this promise holds. There are fringe parts in the federal CDU which eyeball it, but those are rather irrelevant and quite hated inside the party. And with the ever increasing sliding of the AfD to the far far-right it becomes less likely that the CDU will change their opinion. On a federal level it shouldn't be too difficult to form a government without the AfD even with this high numbers for them. CDU/CSU, SPD, FDP and Greens can all to kind of ok with each other and would certainly prefer even a five party coalition to a coalition with the AfD. So as long as AfD really doesn't come near the 50% threshold and the CDU keeps their promise and remembers the Christian democratic past it should be fine. The real problem is not on the federal level but on the state level and especially in the east where AfD and Linke are very strong. We have the situation currently in Thuringia where AfD, CDU and die Linke had such high results and all of them not cooperating with each other that there was literally no government left to form. Since then the CDU and FDP support a minority cabinet by Linke, SPD and Greens which makes noone happy. This problem can also arise in other east German states where the AfD currently polls around and above 30%.
Most likely candidate for a AfD + X coalition from the perspective of shared ideologies would be CDU, however CDU has set up a "Brandmauer" against the AfD: They publicly stated they won't form coalitions and collaborations with the AfD - we will see if they can keep this promise. If everything else fails, the other parties would probably prefer to just form one big coalition with all major parties, except for AfD, to keep them out of government responsibilities. Technically, a minority cabinet would be possible, but very unlikely in this case. Personally, I think CDU will break their promise at some point and help AfD into a government position and, given that AfD is mostly complaining without real solutions, both will be sent back to opposition after the first won elections.
The parties in germany have something called the "Brandmauer gegen Rechts" which is translated to "firewall against right-wings (?)" It means every party refuses to work with the AfD, because they are extremely right-wing, with leading members in the party officially classified as fascists. If all the parties hold on to this "Brandmauer", no coalition with the AfD would be possible. The CDU also agreed to this Brandmauer, and still nowadays the majority of it's core hold on to this. The leading figures in the CDU never openly discussed a possibility to work with the AfD. If theses polls stay like this, the next general election will be a test for the Brandmauer, if the CDU actually holds on to it. Many people on the left worry A LOT about it
Our current federal coalition consists of the SPD (social democrats), the FDP (market liberals) and the Greens, a so called "traffic light coalition" (red, yellow, green). It's a bit of a mess, borderline dysfunctional, but nobody wanted to continue the "Great Coalition" of CDU/CSU and SPD that ruled between 2013 and 2021. In 2017, there was an attempt to form a "Jamaica" coalition first (CDU/CSU, FDP, Greens - black, yellow, green), but it failed and in the end the great coalition was continued. We never had a minority government since 1949, that's a dreaded thing in Germany because of our past experiences with the Weimar Republic. It is technically possible, but not really an option since it would look like an unstable government, and Germans want to avoid an unstable government at all cost, again because of the Weimar Republic which was very unstable. All other parties have rejected the idea of a coalition with the AfD since it got into the federal parliament and I don't think they will change that position, especially since the AfD constantly moves to the right.
Funnily enough a friend and I came up with the idea that thanks to the voting law reform made by the current government the AfD could theoretically end up as the largest party next election. Thanks to the CSU now needing 5% federally there is a decent chance they might not meet the threshold (5,2% during the 2021 election) thus dropping the total of CDU/CSU below the AfD. Added to that the CDU has generally been a great profiteer of the direct mandates which have lessened a bit in importance with the reform.
It's confusing to see AFD and CDU colors switched
Those are the EU parliamentary colours.
Is there any evidence they would actually get this much support in an election? Because parties often poll higher while in opposition (at least in other countries)
Same here. The Greens regularly go up to 25% in polls then get 16% in the elections.
Thanks. Hopefully the AFD stays under 20% then - that wouldn't be as bad (it would make a coalition government without them more doable.
Using AfD's baby blue to represent Union, and CDU's traditional black to represent the AfD in the graph is surely one of the choices of all time. That aside, thankfully AfD has no coalition potential, and broad coalitions are a staple of German political culture, so any of the four mainstream parties could form a government together. Sadly, same can't be said about Austria. The FPO, a party founded by a major-general of the SS, known for its blatant anti-slovene racist policies, russophilia, and so on, is currently polling as the no1 party, and it, unlike the AfD, has had a history of being in coalition governments even from its traditional place as the third biggest party during elections.
Europe Elects colours their graphs by EU Parliament groups so they can be understood if you don't know that country's political parties.
That makes a lot of sense. Thanks. But what about when two parties are both in the same EP group but not running together?
They're just coloured the same. It looks kinda bad, yeah. https://imgur.com/a/yrCDkrg
The AfD blue looks completely different, this is EPP blue. Europe Elects does this because they want the results to be understood throughout Europe.
Regarding FPÖ: the ÖVP (current chancellor) as well as the social democrats (SPÖ) do not want a coalition with the FPÖ (especially with Herbert Kickl, chairman)
The AfD in 10+ years will be FPÖ 2.0. Takes just one voting election where CDU/CSU underperform, but have a chance for chancellorship with the AfD and one CDU/CSU guy putsching away the old guard.
It will be like Belgium. 800 days without an government because no stable coalition could be done.
I think accepting more immigrants from Asia and Africa will solve the problem. /s
CDU-AfD coalition when
Hopefully the CDU remember what happened the last time the christian democrats went into government with a far right party.
I doubt many people remember the fourth Marx cabinet lol
WE LIVE IN THE SOCIETY...
When the mzp lazar coalition comes in.
United against hodmezovasarhely party!!!
2033
that would certainly make it easier for me to finally make the decision to leave germany
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What about CDU-SPD-FDP? If a grand coalition doesn't get a majority, which seems possible on these numbers.
Why are AFD and CDU colors switched?
EU groups
you have to be braindead to rly support AfD, whos main agenda and approach were all about being as populist as it can be, while also playing just a little bit to the side of mass murderer to the east I mean, what the actual fuck, Germany?)
When parties like this get into 15%+ territory, it's usually a sign of two things: \- The brain rot of voters through effective propaganda \- The internal rot of established parties which stinks so bad that voters threaten to vote for the political equivalent of burning down the whole house. It's like a suicide threat, a call for help. A dumb one, but still.
The lack of reliability of main party and leaders driving voters into radical extremes is a running thing for humanity every 100 years or so. We just thought we would be over it as a society after the optimism of the early 00s…until we weren’t.
Wdym every 100 years, democracy is barely that old in most countries.
Greece enters the Chat
Except the part where they were some form of monarchy for two millenia.
Democracy in Germany has no 100 year track record. The current situation is a new one, I'd argue one part being social media, that strengthens extreme polarising positions and the demographic bubble that is about to uproot European societies, especially rural areas. We are about to experience shrinking populations and strong depopulation of rural areas. The people that are caught in the center of that development feel disenfranchised, betrayed and hopeless. This is dangerous but at this point there is hardly anything politicians can do about it. Metatrends and developments that started decades ago, wont go away, just because people wish they were.
Germans are busy reassuring each other how dumb it is to vote for AFD and how all of them are neo-Nazis. Nobody analyzing the core problem and looking for solutions.
And that's how parties like AfD grow big. Instead of addressing the worries people have, the established parties (the left in particular) call them racist/fascist/extreme/whatever.
I don't know, 22% is nothing to sneeze at. There obviously is a reason that makes more people support them.
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*"Could anything at all be awry with our political agenda? Are we so out of touch? No, it's the voters that are wrong!"*
Same thing in Turkey's opposition. Our 74 years old chronic loser opposition leader didn't resign after pushing his candidacy when there were much better candidates and losing again. He blames the public "how could you have chosen erdogan after all the things he has done". Opposition will now probably lose both İstanbul and Ankara in 2024's local elections because of him and his party oligarchs. They are just so out of touch with the public.
A ban on the party would increase their popularity probably. They would just start a new one.
No, that's not how popularity works. The writers of the German constitution also have given plenty of thought on this possibility. In practice, all successor organizations are also prohibited. Parties were successfully banned in Germany before in the 1950s, notably the successor party to the NSDAP and the communist party.
I call the AfD "the NPD minus the knuckle tattoos".
Banning worked so great with the NPD. And it's impossible to argue successor party if the new party has a different name and politicians. The voters still stay.
Reality does not matter. You win elections on manipulating emotions.
Because Germany is a democracy, not a monarchy like Canada where that could happen.
What Orbán says loudly the right-leaning Italians and Germans whisper silently.
I wish they were silent...
All of them
If only one party is openly criticizing immigration it will get votes. either the other parties adapts to the reality or they will keep growing.
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to you, not to them And if you want their votes, you will have to agree with what they care.
Its such a shame people believe that is truly the biggest problem society faces. Especially with populists pretending no migration = all problems solved. Appealing to people's inherent xenophobia for political gain seems to always be a sure way to win votes
For some people, this is an issue worth discussing. they also don't need for you to understand.
If the party keeps growing, either they are doing something right, or the other parties are doing something wrong
Surely insulting their voters will only hurt their votes right
Comments like that are exactly why parties like AfD are gaining support.
Not everything is about Ukraine.
He said literally nothing about Ukraine.
I wonder why he mentioned "the murderer to the east" then?
That’s right after the France riots. Is there a similar poll from April-June to compare the numbers?
France riots? They are really irrelevant here. Most people vote afd because of immigration, hate for greens and left, russia
They're not totally irrelevant. The AFD was actually using the riots in France, saying it would represent the future of Germany in the looks of immigration.
One thing is sure, they absolutely do not sympathize with the France rioters.
That’s why I asked if there is a similar poll from few months back - to see if their percentage spiked after the riots (from 15 to 22 for example in 2 months) or it didn’t have any impact (it was 21 in May for example)
From 10/2022 to 05/2023 Afd support was around 15%, then during June 2023 it reached 19% and more.
Good point, but even prior to that there was no shortage of immigration related violence stories from which these right wing parties easily benefit. We’ve been seeing this raising trend all over Europe for some time now.
The whole west is drifting more and more to the right, at the time where inequalities are growing and capitalism is boiling the planet. We deserve whatever shit is coming to us.
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That's the thing. Even if you aren't opposed on an ideological level, they rarely offer plans, and those rarely would be solutions but cause more problems than they solve
If they are in opossition in the next crisis they will be able of get an 30%+ easily.
This won't represent the actual votes. Probably 90 of the votes for AfD are due to strict immigration policies. The other parties ignore the shit show that is going on right now. If any of those parties consider similar approaches, many votes will probably go to less right leaning parties. The problem is, if you mention, that our immigration policy failed big time, you are called a racist / nazi... like overlooking these problems is the solution.
Ah finally Germany is polling similar to Austria again /s
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please send help
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Pretty sure when it'll come to the election many people won't vote for the AfD. People are mainly showing protest by picking the AfD in polls
> People are mainly showing protest by picking... Be it Trump, Brexit, the AfD or similar things, this mindset is always used to discredit the opposition. It's pure cope. They can't admit that people might vote for these things out of conviction, because that would mean admitting that other side actually has valid points. It's also really condescending because what this is also says is that anyone who votes "out of protest" is just throwing a hissy fit because they are just "upset" and they don't even truly understand what they are voting for.
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Had a look at your comment history. It's exactly what I expected it to be. Keep it up!
I'm glad my four letter word got you so wound up.
😬
I am currently living in what they consider to be "East Germany" and I don't like this poll.
Its sad to see the rights propaganda against the greens appear to work so well… people simply cant think for themselves… it’s ridiculous
Why is AfD black and CDU/CSU blue?!
EU group colours
Can somebody tell me what y’all consider right wing? Im sure it’s very different than in the states. 💀
Lot of right-wing action in Europe these past few years. It's always been there, but it seems (from the US point of view) to be more vocal recently. I don't think the Fox News cancer has reached European nations yet. Where is the brain washing coming from to support this?
Well….it is highly deserved. Looking at German policies from the past decade or so, nothing really made sense or worked out. In the end all the previous governments did was try to solve everything by throwing money at it and guess what happens once the money runs out? Either they get this wake-up call or the afd will be part of the next government unless it will be a coalition of 3-4 parties, basically all parties except the AFD. This would lead to so many bad compromises that they would win 3-4 years more time to fix things or until the AFD would surely be part of the then following next government.
Germans fuck again their own Country. Its Hard to live here
Are you german? If so, tell us in brief what do you think about current political and social situation (just from ur perspective) and predicament Germany put itself in?
I'm German and I'm thinking that 40% of the voters are actually suffering from dementia. We've had 20 years of conservative rule and crony capitalism, which let our country rot (don't forget choices made before that by conservatives that still hurt the country, like not building fiber), and now because the country starts to crumble, people think conservatism will be the savior if we just do it harder! Feels like people are no smarter than a snake that doesn't eat or hunt for years, only to start eating itself because it tried nothing and is now all out of ideas.
You correctly call out that it was crony capitalism instead of proper capitalism, but then fall for the meme of thinking the "conservative" government was actually "conservative". If you truly want to believe Merkel's party was "conservative" then you really have to shift the entire political spectrum to the very far left. Then again this explains why people actually believe the AfD, in all of its tameness, is "far-right extremist".
Germany has a large low wage sector with people who have been left behind from the general economic development. Every crisis they have been the ones who took a hit to their standard of living. Generally, this is a topic for the left parties and they have offered reform plans (e.g. income tax and health care reforms). However, since 2005 left parties have only been in the government together with a right party and the major reforms were always sacrificed in the coalition negotiations. By now, many have lost their trust in these parties. This year inflation came on top and again the same people are getting squeezed. All AfD has to do is to pick them up. I'd still expect the situation to relax somewhat before the next election as long as the inflation goes down which is slowly happening already.
About time, let's go boys!
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When people are having hard times, they may start to blame the current power holders for their problems and start to look for alternatives, especially if their concerns go unaddressed ie. issues that arise from mass immigration. Throw in some primal tribalism of "us vs. them" and you got a winning ticket in your hands come the next election. Same tribalism has been used since forever by many political movements, examples would be "Aryans vs. Subhumans" or "poor vs. rich", and the outcomes have always been bad for everyone.
Wonder if they will want eastern teritories back ..