Germany’s Nightmare Continues

The exclusion of AfD from a CDU coalition promises more of the disastrous status quo

The German federal elections have concluded, and the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) came out the victor with 28.6% of the vote, and 208 seats in the Bundestag. Every member of the collapsed “traffic light” coalition lost seats. Now-former Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) lost 9.3% of their vote share, constituting the party’s worst ever result in a federal election, and its largest election-on-election loss of votes. Two million SPD voters switched to the CDU. The Greens lost 3.1%, and the Free Democratic Party (FDP) lost 7.1%, falling below the 5% threshold to enter the Bundestag.