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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   1091 thread views

Transnational Thursday for February 20, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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Federal elections are over, results as following (630 seats total):

  • CDU ("conservative"): 28.5%, 208 seats
  • AfD (nationalist): 20.8%, 152 seats
  • SPD (social-democrats): 16.4%, 120 seats
  • Greens (green, yeah): 11.6%, 85 seats
  • Left (leftist, seriously): 8.7%, 64 seats

All the other parties didn't make past the 5% minimum and thus aren't allowed to play in this term. And if you noticed one seat missing, that one went to the SSW, the South-Schleswig Voter Union, a party for ethnic Frisians and Danes that is allowed to skip the 5% rule for reasons of, effectively, Affirmative Action.

So we'll get another Great Coalition, as they call themselves - CDU and SPD giving us four years of Weiter So: more of the same.

The CDU campaigned on a tough-on-migration platform. They correctly judged that this would allow them to appeal to voters who consider migration the top issue but still find the AfD unacceptable. I for one don't find it at all credible. The party sat by and let Merkel do her thing or even supported her as she welcomed the mass migrations of 2015 and onward, and a bit of electoral campaign rhetoric isn't much convincing evidence that they actually changed their minds. This was a successful tactical move, and the next step is to backpedal and form a coalition with the SPD who are still married to the old idea of "German bad, foreigner good".

Someone please tell me I'm wrong.

The only other coalition that would have a parliamentary majority would be CDU + AFD, and the CDU reaffirmed their categorical adherence to the anti-AFD zero-cooperation "firewall" policy.

Silesia is in south-western Poland. Schleswig seems to have its own name in english.

You're right, sloppy of me. Corrected.

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