Politico: The greening of Germany

Over the past year, support for the country’s environmental party has doubled. In several recent polls the Greens have even overtaken Chancellor Angela Merkel’s seemingly unbeatable Christian Democrats (informally known as the “Blacks” in Germany’s party color spectrum). [...]

While Bütikofer said there’s no single reason for the Green’s recent success, he cited the party’s long-standing commitment to combatting climate change, now Germans’ top political priority, as essential.[...]

Though Merkel’s ministers are dutifully ploughing through the fine print of the coalition agreement, trying to combine ideological opposites means the government’s priorities are more about preserving the status quo than breaking new ground. [...]

In last month’s European election, 1.5 million voters defected from the Social Democrats to the Greens. Many left-leaning voters support the Greens because they feel the Social Democrats have violated their ideals by backing painful social reforms. [...]

What’s more, Germans have become much more comfortable with a party many used to regard as far out of the mainstream. Two-thirds of Germans think the Greens will play an important role in shaping the country’s politics in the coming years, according to a study published this month. More than half believe the party represents modern, centrist policies.

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The Atlantic: A Slow, Somber End to the Merkel Era

Merkel—who has led her party for 18 years and her country for 13—will continue as Germany’s chancellor until the next federal elections, expected in 2021, but she will relinquish her position as the leader of the center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) in December and won’t run for further political office. “I am sure today that it’s time to open a new chapter,” she told reporters in Berlin.[...]

But while she survived all those battles on the surface, each dealt a blow to her image as the country’s beacon of stability and, perhaps more importantly, to her standing within her party. “It’s quite clear that the election last September was a turning point,” Jan Techau, who heads the German Marshall Fund’s Europe project, said in an interview. “Since then, she’s been under tremendous pressure to give some sort of indication as to how long this can last.”[...]

Hesse was the final straw: The state-level election there very clearly became a referendum on the performance of Merkel’s government in Berlin, and both the CDU and the center-left SPD posted significant losses as a result. Despite Merkel’s personal involvement in the campaign—she stumped with Hesse Premier Volker Bouffier across the state multiple times—her party dropped more than 10 percentage points in the past five years. Merkel nodded to the Hesse results in her remarks Monday, saying the party’s support there was “disappointing and bitter” and a “clear signal that things can’t go on as they are.”[...]

But it also poses a challenge: Whoever takes over from Merkel as party leader is someone she will have to work closely with for the remainder of her chancellorship. A like-minded CDU leader could make that transition easier than a rival. Merkel has nevertheless said she is ready to work with whomever is chosen to replace her. “I am someone who can work very well together with a lot of different people, and I think I have a reputation for it,” Merkel said.

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Jacobin Magazine: Last Chance, SPD

The report concluded that the SPD is no longer perceived as a credible voice on issues of social and economic justice. It argued that Martin Schulz’s election as leader had been a small step in the right direction, but that the many compromises among the party leadership (whose main goal seems to be avoiding having to distance themselves from the neoliberal reforms they imposed in government in the mid-2000s) meant that his election slogans about social justice rang hollow. Above all, the report emphasized a “collective failure of leadership” — not only were Schulz and his predecessor Sigmar Gabriel at fault, but the entire leadership which had set the party’s agenda for years. Despite these blunt truths, and earlier announcements that the party would be seeking to renew itself, the SPD has made an almost pathological choice to continue with more of the same. [...]

The SPD now promised to reinvent itself while in government and sent both Martin Schulz and Sigmar Gabriel into (temporary) political retirement. “Renewal,” however, meant that not a single member of the party’s left wing joined the new leadership: no one who campaigned against re-forming the grand coalition found themselves in a leading position. The only new face in the party leadership is the new general secretary, Lars Klingbeil. But Klingbeil is by no means a man of the Left; he is, in fact, a long-standing member of the Seeheimer Kreis (“Seeheim Circle”), an influential grouping on the right of the party. [...]

After the election, when it initially seemed as if the SPD would take up a position in the opposition, Nahles told journalists that the party would attack the CDU head-on. Now, she is busy explaining that Germany “can’t take in all” of the refugees. Pragmatism veering into cynical opportunism is nothing new for SPD elites, but nonetheless never fails to amaze. [...]

The list of Scholz’s political achievements is long but give the list to someone with no knowledge of the man, and they may be shocked to find out that he claims to be a social democrat. This is not to say that he could have been from the right-wing extremist Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), but simply that Scholz largely embodies the archetype of a bourgeois rather than Social Democratic politician. In 2001, as the Hamburg city-state’s Senator of the Interior, he passed a law that allowed police to forcibly administer emetics to drug dealers — a measure the European Court of Human Rights later labelled a human rights violation. This, from a man who began his career as a left-wing Juso.

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Social Europe: Power Is Draining Away From Angela Merkel

An unprecedented seven parties entered the Bundestag after the September 2017 election. Alongside Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), her Bavarian allies the CSU, and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the four smaller parties were the leftist Die Linke, the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), the Greens and the right wing AfD. Before the election, the CDU/CSU and the SPD held 80% of the seats in the Bundestag, with the Greens and Die Linke holding the rest. What this means is that the executive was strong and the legislature was weak. The 2017 election changed the German political landscape. [...]

The right wing of the CDU cannot forgive Merkel for moving the once conservative CDU so far in a liberal-social democratic direction. Conservatives have been grumbling for a long time, and are thinking about an end to the Merkel era. Merkel’s CDU has lost more influence in the new government than it has gained. [...]

The CSU is frustrated with Merkel’s course on migration and feeling the pressure from the right wing, namely the AfD. Even outside of Bavaria, many Germans don’t trust Merkel to fix the refugee system. A recent poll showed 53 percent say Merkel hasn’t managed the refugee influx well. Meanwhile, a poll in Stern magazine showed that about two-thirds of Germans agree with the CSU’s position on turning away refugees at the border.

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Slate: Smoothing an Elephant

Yascha Mounk and Branko Milanovic discuss what his famous elephant curve says about the ills—and the gains—of globalization, how the left’s concern with inequality is being turned against its concern with internationalism, why economic causes of populism are often expressed in cultural ways, and how a determination to increase the financial and educational endowments of ordinary citizens can combat inequality and boost their living standards.

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Haaretz: The Real Story of How the Nazis Have Returned to Germany's Parliament

While the party performed strongly across Germany, the AfD achieved the second-best result of all parties in the former communist-ruled German Democratic Republic and, with 27 percent of the vote share, was the most popular party among East German men. 

When trying to explain the AfD’s success, analysts have often pointed to eastern Germany’s continuing relative economic weakness. However, most AfD supporters are not economically "left behind" voters. Studies have found that while the AfD’s electorate is not homogenous, most AfD voters are male, have an average level of education and belong to the medium-income bracket. Moreover, the AfD performed gained more votes than any other party in Saxony, East Germany’s wealthiest state. [...]

After World War II, the East German regime tried to shun its historical responsibility by declaring widespread racism had been overcome, by an incomplete program of denazification, by introducing a new socioeconomic system and by portraying West Germany as the sole inheritor of the Nazi legacy. [...]

Suppressing responsibility for Nazi atrocities was helped by the Marxist-Leninist conception of fascism. Communist doctrine considered fascism to be the most extreme form of capitalism. By changing the socioeconomic structures of the state, communists would, it was argued, be able to rid society of fascist and anti-Semitic elements. In contrast, the West still harbored the virus of fascism as it did not break with capitalism - the wellspring of the horrors of the Nazi regime. [...]

That pervasive ethos meant that when many East Germans were first confronted with the West German Erinnerungskultur (culture of remembrance) after reunification felt very alienated. The AfD has succeeded in tapping into this feeling of alienation and manipulating it to further its own agenda.

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Politico: Seehofer to quit as Bavarian premier to end power struggle

Seehofer’s decision leaves open the possibility that he could become a minister in the next German government. Asked about that prospect on Monday, he replied: “First we’ll see which ministries are available for the CSU, then we’ll see what faces come into question for them.” [...]

Seehofer reportedly told CSU members that he and Söder have a good working relationship — a sign that he backed the finance minister as his successor, even though Söder is a polarizing figure within the party and the two have long have been seen as enemies. [...]

Earlier this year, Seehofer indicated that he planned to continue both as Bavarian premier and CSU leader after the 2018 state election. However, the CSU’s poor performance in September’s German general election — the party won 39 percent of the vote in Bavaria, a 10-point drop from four years earlier — prompted questions about his leadership.

The party is anxious to retain its absolute majority in the Bavarian state parliament and fend off electoral challenges from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). Critics charged that Seehofer hewed too closely to Merkel’s centrist policies during Germany’s refugee crisis, ceding political ground to the strongly anti-immigration AfD. Most CSU members tend to be considerably further right on the issue than Merkel.

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The Atlantic: This Isn't the End of the Merkel Era

The most alarmist of these doubts are overstated, according to Peel, who noted that while Merkel “is clearly wobbled and ... clearly weakened,” it’s still a far cry from her being replaced at the helm of German leadership—in part because she lacks a clear successor within her party, but also because she remains extremely popular among the German population. “She survived as her party’s champion as long as she was a winner,” Peel said, noting that more than half of Germans would prefer for Merkel to remain chancellor. “The moment she looks like no longer being a winner, the rebels will start to mutter. And that’s where you’re getting this muttering coming from, I think. But they’ve got no alternative candidate.”

Merkel’s confidence that she will not resign suggests she knows this. But it could also stem from the fact that she’s weathered crises far worse. “This is definitely a challenge and this has weakened her as a leader, but it’s not as big as the refugee crisis,” Marcel Dirsus, a political scientist at the University of Kiel, told me in reference to Merkel’s 2015 decision to open Germany’s borders to hundreds of thousands of refugees. That move prompted similar predictions of her political demise. “When the refugee crisis was unfolding, there was a legitimate fear … that Merkel was going to fall.” [...]

If Germany were to take the drastic step of holding another round of elections, there’s no indication it would lead to Merkel’s fall. If anything, polls suggest it would result in the same divisions delivered by the first election—an outcome that would force the parties back to coalition talks where they started. Dirsus said this could be avoided if the SPD withdrew their refusal to join the government for another grand coalition—a move the party’s leader Martin Schulz has thus far ruled out. “There is now a lot of pressure on the Social Democrats to at least start coalition talks with Merkel because people are reminding them of their responsibilities to the country,” Dirsus said, adding that: “there is no guarantee that [Schulz] would be the candidate again if there are new elections, so he doesn’t really have an interest in new elections.”

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Politico: In defense of Christian Lindner

In the current political climate, a government bringing together such different animals as traditional conservatives, left-leaning environmentalists and free-market liberals was never going to be a safe bet. The parties clashed on taxation, agricultural policy, climate change and pretty much everything else. Migration turned out to be the most contentious issue, with the CSU and the Greens at odds over the issue of family reunifications of refugees. (Lindner’s FDP sided with the Bavarian conservatives on that one.) [...]

It was first and foremost in Angela Merkel’s interest to overcome obstacles and make the thing fly. The German chancellor has become the reigning world champion in running coalition governments. She excelled at bringing about the kind of hard-won compromises struck in late night meetings that power-sharing requires — and flourished at the expense of her coalition partners. Running a supremely complex government called Jamaica would have been Merkel’s magnum opus, a crowning achievement.

The other players, on the other hand, had less to gain. They wanted the power and the glory and the ministries, of course. But the political differences on key issues were such that each party had to bend over backwards to compromise. A Jamaica coalition, no matter what, would have been a tough sell to the most loyal voters. [...]

Lindner’s decision to pull out, on the other hand, suggests that the self-correcting mechanisms of democracy are kicking in. True, a fair amount of political stability — prioritized by Merkel in recent years — is essential to a functioning system. But in times of change, democracy also needs debate and dissent. Today’s Germany is nothing like the Weimar Republic; following years of political and economic stability, the country can cope with a little uncertainty.  

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Social Europe: Macron’s Challenge For Europe

Macron’s speech was a welcome call to arms for a European Union that is confronting many crises and threats. But on the crucial and controversial question of fixing the eurozone, his proposals were disappointing. And he will have a hard time winning over his more cautious European counterparts, not least German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose room for manoeuvre was crimped by her party’s poor showing in last weekend’s federal election. [...]

The ball is now in Germany’s court. Europe could very well succumb to nationalism if Macron’s plan fails. That would be devastating for Germany, a country whose economic success, political identity, and security are based on a strong, functioning EU.

Macron is the most pro-German French president imaginable, and he has boosted his credibility by pursuing difficult labor-market reforms and unveiling a Teutonically prudent budget. Germany would be committing a monumental strategic blunder if it did not engage seriously with his proposals. [...]

The danger now is that Macron will achieve only a token eurozone budget in exchange for even tighter controls on national budgets, which would prove economically harmful and politically poisonous. He would also miss his chance to enact the reforms that the eurozone actually needs. These include deeper financial-market integration; an easier process for writing down bank and government debts; greater fiscal flexibility; and more balanced economic-adjustment mechanisms.  

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Social Europe: Germany: What Happens Next?

The key question now is: What happens next? After the social democrats have (wisely, I think) opted for a role in the opposition, there will be an extended period of bargaining on coalition formation, with only one majority option remaining on the table: the black-yellow-green “Jamaica”. That option is likely to fail. Differences among the participants cannot possibly be bridged in stable ways. After all, the Greens would at the very least have to win the support of the majority of their membership constituency, which is hard to imagine. The next option is the formation of a black-yellow minority government. That would be without precedent in Germany at the federal level. But it will be tried, as new elections are unlikely to yield an easier-to-handle result, perhaps a worse one. Moreover, there are creeping succession leadership crises in both the CDU and CSU (if not SPD), plus looming divorce issues between the two Christian “sister” parties regarding the continuation of a joint faction in the Bundestag. [...]

Also, a historical virtue of PDS/die Linke is a thing of the past. It consisted of its capacity to mask the legacies of East German xenophobic, authoritarian nativism by reframing it in terms of social justice issues. Now die Linke has lost 420,000 of its voters to Alternative für Deutschland (AfD, which also mobilized nearly 1.5 million non-voters, making it the party with by far the greatest success in mobilizing this group relative to the number of votes it received). In spite of this massive loss to AfD, however, die Linke has been able to more than compensate for it by winning the support of 700,000 former social democratic and 330,000 former green voters.  

There is a clear East/West divide in Germany. The new Länder in the East provided almost twice the level of electoral support for AfD as that of the old Länder. In Saxony, AfD even overtook CDU by a narrow margin and came in first. The same divide worked in Berlin as well as in the EU in general: populists are in power in Hungary and Poland and (so far) nowhere in the West of Europe. [...]

One lesson we can draw from the 2017 campaign and its outcome is this: Centrism of grand coalition governments breeds anti-elite centrifugality and the further fragmentation of party system, with an unprecedented number of seven distinct parties now in the Bundestag. As one commentator observed: “Fighting extremism in Germany may demand less political centrism.” (Another one has joked: There are two right answers to the question: Are there still true social democrats in Germany? One answer is: No – all socialist projects have been abandoned by SPD. The other is: Yes – there are even two of them, namely both members of the grand coalition whose social and economic policies have become virtually indistinguishable.)

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Social Europe: Merkel Promises To Listen To The Cold Wind From The East

Germany’s economic success would suggest that populism and nationalism will not flourish on this soil. The evidence is noteworthy. Chancellor Merkel presides over a fiscally robust country that boasts among the highest real GDP in the EU, a strong export sector that has produced a trade surplus of about €270bn, and in July this year an unemployment rate at just 3.7 per cent. After a sharp drop in 2009, the global financial crisis hasn’t restrained the upward trajectory of the German economy. Indeed, the Chancellor reminds Germans that they have “never had it so good.” [...]

Their historic breakthrough would suggest sound sustainable economic prosperity is no longer the main criterion for political success. The two main political parties behind Germany’s economic prosperity lost votes. Merkel’s CDU lost 7.4 per cent and former coalition partner, SPD, 5.2 per cent. What could possibly explain this seismic political shift? For the ruling parties to lose votes to a party that did not so much as promise any more economic prosperity, let alone guarantee to sustain it. That Germans have never had it so good clearly does not appeal nor apply to the 5,877,094 who voted AfD. [...]

Merkel has reportedly offered to listen to the “concerns and anxieties” of those electors from the east. How and to what extent her listening will test those safeguards and restrain the AfD within the political establishment is a key question. It is certain their participation within it will change Germany. An AfD leader, Alexander Gauland, is widely reported to have said as much: “we will change this country.” Contemplating how they would do it reminds me of Carl Schmitt, a famed German jurist who later became an unabashed Nazi supporter. He argued in 1932 that parliamentary democracy, as constituted by the principles of liberalism, had failed. He pointed to an impotent “weak Germany” as evidence. To build a “strong state” Germany must do “away with politics!”

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Jacobin Magazine: Germany Is Not an Island

The other big story, and the precondition for the AfD’s surge, is the ongoing erosion of the political center. Germany has yet to witness a spectacular implosion of the center-left like in France or Greece, but the Social Democratic Party (SPD) ended the night with 20.5 percent, its worst postwar result and a humiliating defeat for its renewal candidate Martin Schulz. [...]

Though the German elections may seem relatively “normal” by contemporary European standards, a second peculiar fact stands out in the exit poll data: 84 percent of eligible voters described Germany’s economic situation as “good” — the highest number in decades. This makes sense given the country’s moderate but sustained economic growth and declining unemployment, particularly in light of conditions elsewhere in Europe. Although wages have stagnated for decades and job growth is concentrated primarily in precarious, low-wage employment, in the eyes of most German voters their country and economy now appear as an island of relative stability, making it understandable why many would be willing to “act satisfied and shut up,” as Oliver Nachtwey put it. [...]

This should come as little surprise, as the AfD stitches together a coalition between deeply conservative, former CDU voters repelled by Merkel’s shift towards the center on many social issues, and dissatisfied working-class and unemployed voters, where economic and social anxieties intermingle with racist and chauvinistic sentiments in a jumbled assortment of anti-establishment posturing. These constituencies, and other segments of the population who voted for the AfD, are united at the ballot box under a xenophobic, protectionist banner, despite the fact that the AfD’s economic program would be disastrous for many of its lower-income supporters if ever implemented. [...]

All qualifications aside, the AfD’s rise represents a true watershed in postwar German politics and a warning of what the future could bring. Germany is not an island surrounded by a crisis-prone Europe, but rather part and parcel of this crisis. Its centrifugal nature may have insulated the country from its most devastating economic effects and dramatic political shifts thus far, but as last Sunday demonstrated, nowhere in Europe is immune to the threat of right-populism today. Should present trends continue, a radical right-wing force will stabilize and consolidate itself as a permanent presence in German politics — whether in the form of the AfD or another, potentially more radical formation after it.

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Quartz: The far right is reeling in professionals, hipsters, and soccer moms

Last Sunday (Sept 24), German voters put a far-right party into parliament for the first time since the Second World War. Right-wing nationalists Alternative for Germany (AFD) won 13% of the vote, easily overcoming the 5% threshold needed to enter the German Bundestag. A previous study (link in German) showed that AFD supporters come from different social classes, including workers, families with above-average incomes, and even academics. The study concluded that what was common among AFD voters was their dislike for Angela Merkel’s so-called open-door policy to refugees. [...]

In France, the far-right Front National (FN) enjoyed support from almost 40% of voters aged 18-24-year-old in the run up to the election. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the FN, courted young voters by taking up traditionally left-wing causes, such as women’s rights, and championing the welfare state (albeit for French citizens, and not foreigners). At the end of the first round of the election, 21% of young people cast their vote for Le Pen (young voters had broken for the far left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon in the first round). But by the second round of voting, which saw Le Pen against Emmanuel Macron, the former won 34% (paywall) of the vote among 18-24-year-old. [...]

It’s not just men shoring up right-wing populists. Le Pen was backed by a quiet army of women. Le Pen’s attempts to rebrand her party has clearly had an effect on women; a study by French pollster Ifop found that women made up 48% of voters who have voted for the FN previously. Women played an important role in the US too. While women did vote overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton, white women did not. Overall, 52% of white women voted to elect Donald Trump. That figure jumps to 62% when looking at non-college-educated women. [...]

Yes, angry, working class men disillusioned by globalization have supported right-wing populism. But so did the hipsters, the soccer moms, and well to do suburbanite, highlighting the deep chasms in societies across the Western world.

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Social Europe: SPD: Snatching Revival From The Jaws Of Defeat

A minority government is inherently unstable but also in a Jamaica coalition Merkel will be caught between a rock and a hard place. The AfD had an unexpectedly good result in Bavaria, where the CSU (Merkel’s sister party in Bavaria) has lost substantial ground. The party chairman Horst Seehofer has already announced that he thinks that ‘leaving the right flank open’ was the main reason for this poor showing. Given that Bavarian elections are looming next year, it is predictable that he will try to pull the next German government to the right. And having a shrill extremist party like the AfD in the federal parliament will also push Merkel in the same direction. [...]

The SPD in contrast will have the opportunity to regroup in opposition facing a rather weak government. It will have the breathing space to develop an alternative politics for Germany with which it can contest the next election in 2021 (or earlier). The AfD is unlikely to be an effective opposition party as it freely admits to having no policy at all in many key areas. It is also likely to fall back into internal tribalism and conflicts between its populist and even more extreme wings. The final party in parliament, Die Linke, did not do very well in opposition against the Grand Coalition and is unlikely to play a more dominant role this time around. These dynamics could work well for the SPD. [...]

The Grand Coalition was never intended to be a permanent model and it is beyond its shelf-date now. It is time to broaden political competition within the democratic camp. If the SPD is successful in developing an alternative politics in opposition, not only might it regain a strong position soon but it might also make an important contribution to bringing AfD voters back into the mainstream fold. Yesterday’s election was a political earthquake and not every crisis provides an opportunity. This one, however, truly does.

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The New York Review of Books: Germany’s Election: Choosing the Unspeakable

The apparent calm of the election belied the real concerns of the German public, concerns evident in the election results. Merkel began her campaign late and then barely campaigned; she gave plain speeches that rarely mentioned her opponents. To the eyes of the public, the two major parties seemed nearly identical. This provided the AfD with an opening to be the opposition. If people turned to a party that said the unspeakable, it was partly because very speakable things weren’t being said at all. [...]

“Merkel and Schulz: they agree,” read a headline after the one TV debate of the election season, in which the two candidates seemed to bat canned answers back and forth. The four other parties that will enter the Bundestag, or Parliament—in addition to the AfD, the economically liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), the Greens, and the far-left Die Linke—were relegated to a follow-up show the next evening. Merkel and Schulz barely discussed the eurozone. Education and NATO spending did not come up. [...]

The central issue of the campaign, migration, barely came up at all in most of the speeches by Merkel and Schulz. Merkel herself hardly mentioned the subject in her campaign, as if hoping the issue would simply go away. The CDU’s “strategy was to not talk about it, hoping in vain that voters wouldn’t realize it,” Dr. Timo Lochocki of the German Marshall Fund told me. 

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The Atlantic: Angela Merkel Reorients Germany

Why was Angela Merkel just elected to a fourth term as German chancellor? Ahead of Sunday’s election, the German journalist Robin Alexander offered one explanation. Since the economy is thriving and the nation’s politics are relatively placid despite the disruptive rise of a far-right populist-nationalist party, many Germans think they’re living on a “ship of stability and around us it’s very stormy.” Consider: Vladimir Putin changed Ukraine’s borders by force; Donald Trump, who “in German eyes behaves like a madman,” was elected president of the United States; Britain voted to exit the European Union; and France, had Marine Le Pen won this year’s presidential race, might have left the bloc as well, destroying the entire EU project. [...]

The United States has served as a model for German democracy and as a guarantor of German security, both through NATO and America’s nuclear-weapons arsenal. The European Union has allowed Germany to become a leading power in Europe while maintaining good relations with its neighbors—as Puglierin put it, “to breathe and to feel well in our own shoes.” In Brexit, the EU will lose its second-largest economy and its strongest link to the United States. In Trump, Germans have confronted a leader across the Atlantic who has wavered on defending NATO members, demanded that Germany pay more for U.S. military protection, challenged certain aspects of liberal democracy, championed the very nationalism that European integration was designed to transcend, and dismissed the EU as a “vehicle” for German power. At first, after the one-two punch of Brexit andTrump, Germans had “the impression that our world crumbled,” Puglierin said. [...]

In a telling debate before the German election, representatives of the country’s six main parties were asked which of four nations—the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Turkey—was Germany’s closest partner. Two chose the U.K. in a show of European solidarity. Two picked the U.S. because transatlantic relations were most important, though they explicitly excluded Donald Trump, the “outrageous U.S. president” who “is insulting the whole world and endangering the world with his tweets,” from the partnership. One—the emissary from Merkel’s party—wondered why he couldn’t pick France. Another made no selection whatsoever. When the moderator asked whether any audience members thought Trump was a “reliable partner for Germany,” two lonely hands went up.

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Financial Times: Germany’s election results in charts and maps

More than 1m voters shifted away from the CDU/CSU parties to the AfD — but even more went to the FDP. 

The SPD lost votes in nearly equal measure to the FDP, the Left, the Greens and the AfD.  The AfD was the big winner, drawing votes from all the big parties, especially the CDU/CSU bloc. Even more important, though, was its ability to mobilise previously disengaged voters and those who before voted for minor parties.

The FDP was the main beneficiary of the swing away from the CDU/CSU parties, while the Left offset losses to the AfD with gains from the SPD elsewhere. The Greens benefited from the decline of the SPD. [...]

Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research, DIW said: “The SPD has lost its classic working-class voters and this explains its constant struggle in the past elections.”   

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Quartz: The leader of Germany’s far-right party quit hours after its election success—because it’s too radical

This doesn’t mean Petry is a moderate, she’s far from it. A member of the AfD since 2013, it was she who put the former eurosceptic party on its new anti-immigration platform during the height of the refugee crisis in 2015. She’s made numerous controversial statements about refugees too, including that “Islam does not belong in Germany,” and saying that German border police should be allowed to fire on migrants along the Austria-German border.

Petry, who for some has been acceptable face of xenophobia, has been critical of radical statements made by others in the party as she believed it made it less attractive to moderate voters as well as for potential coalition partners when it would enter the Bundestag for the first time. [...]

Alexander Gauland stuck to his inflammatory rhetoric at the party’s first post-election press conference on Monday morning. “One million people, foreigners, being brought into this country are taking away a piece of this country and we as AfD don’t want that,” Gauland said. “We don’t want to lose Germany to an invasion of foreigners from a different culture.”

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CityLab: Berlin After the Elections

This stark national picture was mirrored quite clearly in Berlin, still Germany’s largest city by far. Here too the CDU’s votes fell somewhat, the Social Democrats plummeted even more steeply, and the AfD also saw large gains. Within city limits, however, there’s another trend that is deeply rooted and glaring for anyone who knows the city. Politically, Berlin remains overwhelmingly divided along the line of the Berlin Wall.

Electorally, Berlin’s East-West separation is almost as clear as ever. In the West, leafy outlying suburbs and some wealthier inner neighborhoods voted for the CDU, while citizens in the inner city voted in largest numbers for the SPD and Greens.

In the East, some suburbs also voted CDU—Merkel’s party seems unusual in having appeal across the East-West divide. Beyond that, however, the contrast is stark. By far the largest number of electoral districts voted for Die Linke, a leftist party originating partly from former communists and partly from left-wing defectors from the SPD. Meanwhile, AfD gained a footing out in the eastern suburbs. In keeping with national patterns, this anti-immigration party did better in Berlin districts that have fewer foreign-born citizens. [...]

Western boroughs have, as a whole, voted for either the CDU (represented by black) or the SPD (represented by red), while in the east they have gone for Die Linke (purple)—which has outperformed AfD when presented in terms of boroughs alone. The one exception is the central borough that voted Green (guess which color?), though on close inspection even this proves to be less exceptional than you might think. This is Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, a borough created from one western and one eastern borough amalgamated into one. The western part of the borough, a place with a strong counter-cultural tradition, voted mainly Green, while the eastern part voted mainly for Die Linke. In other words, the East-West divide here remains essentially the same as elsewhere.

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