2025 German Federal Elections 🇩🇪

[Raze]

2 hours ago, Nilsi said:

Come on, that's misleading, and you know it.

Foreign nationals made up 37.4% of crime suspects in 2022 despite being only 14.6% of the population, while 62.6% of suspects were German citizens. This clearly shows a higher per-capita crime suspect rate among non-Germans.

Let’s get the facts straight - this isn't about racism. Basic sociology explains a lot of it. 

Many migrants, particularly those fleeing conflict or economic hardship, face significant challenges - cultural adaptation, economic instability, and social isolation. In certain cases, frustration, especially among young men with limited opportunities, can escalate into violence. However, this is not inherently about ethnicity or religion - those explanations are often just post hoc rationalizations used by perpetrators to make sense of a psychological rupture and, of course, serve as convenient narratives for fascist agendas.

He said the majority. 

[TimStr]

On 20.2.2025 at 7:23 PM, Husseinisdoingfine said:

I would love if more German users could give their perspectives.

What's the situation of the ground in the Fatherland. Why is the AfD so so popular, and with whom? Who are you going to vote for, and why?

German here. AMA, I will try my best to answer. (And thanks for caring!)

So generally, this election feels very very significant. People are caring and debating, the air is very charged and thats actually the good news, I would say! The people really think, that there is something at stake. So let me share a couple of points.

Things that concern voters the most in this election:

1) Economy
Many germans think, that their economy is in bad shape. The reality for many people here is, that rents and cost of living have risen. Many people blame this on the economic policy of the last coalition. It's hard to judge if this is overblown, because inflation in the last years was global and covid stimulus also backfired globally. Also, energy prises have skyrocketed because of the start of the ukraine war and sanctions on russian gas and because of the governments descision to transition to green energy. Yet, people look for someone to blame. They think, that the "Energiewende" is made on their backs and that the red-green coalition ruined the economy with their pro environmental policies, since there were deficiancies in the national budget. Many people feel like financing their life is getting harder and politicians promising a better economy sounds like an aid for that.

2) Migration
Germanys demographic has been shaped by Merkals liberal immigration laws and syrian and ukrainian refugees coming here. Since germanys burocracy is a hell of a nightmare, many foreign people have a really hard time to get their paperwork, especially non-german speakers. So he country struggles to properly integrate these people and is running into real issues. There have also been a couple of attacks on civilians like in Magdeburg and Solingen that were immediately exploited by all parties to push their points on migration before being properly investigated. So migrants are scapegoated and many people think that the country is in trouble because of mass migration and the social service these migrants get. Many also think that crime is on the rise because of this. There was a new, very recent study, that showed that it actually isn't [Tagesschau.de]. Still, this leads to many people leaning to more conservative policies on migration, despite, that germany is dependant on foreign workers to not suffer from the demographic overhang (see below).

3) War in Ukraine
I think, germans are really divided here. Left parties (Linke) are against supporting Ukrain and want to find peaceful solutions, center to left parties (Green and SPD) want to support Ukraine and center to right (CDU) as well. Exterme parties (AFD and BSW) are against ukraine support. So the whole political spectrum is really divided on this.
But since germany is part of NATO and has had years of underspending on militairy, contiuing the war would mean huge investments in the next couple of years. This again fules the economic concerns of many voters, as they see a continuing support for Ukraine as a drag on their wallet.

Some underlying dynamics:

1) Demographics:
There is a generational overhang in germany. The biggest generation, the boomer generation will retire in the next 5-10 years. This generation will leave the work force and get pension. Because of low birth rates, there is more pressure on younger generations, yet, their interests have less voting power, because there are just less voters in this generation. This means, that germany is at the risk of becoming a gerontocracy (a hegemony of the old).

2) Money and lobbyism in politics:
Allthough its not as extreme as in other countries, this is definately an issue. Parties have to disclose, who they are getting money from. And so far, its prohibited to recieve money from non-german funders. But there are still huge donations and corporate lobbyism.  Also, many of the heads of german parties have connection to industry and big money (eg. Friedrich Merz (CDU) to BASF and Black Rock[Correctiv.org] and Olaf Scholz (SPD) has been connected to CumEx tax crimes [tagesschau.de]).

3) Media and Social Media:
Overall, I feel like germany has some really solid media, sice some of them ARD, ZDF and a bounch of other news outlets are founded by Rundfunkbeitrag (basically public money that is not part of taxes, that should allow financing a media with no political interference). But social media is a nightmare and alternative news outlets have gained foothold among some groups of voters. The problem of information bubbles, alternative narratives "schwurbeln" and of fake news is real, though I would say its not as bad as in many other countries.

4) Infrastructure and "Schuldenbremse"
There is a constitutional law, that germany cannot surpass a new national debt of above 0.35% of the GDP. Though there are exeptions to this for natural disasters and some other things, most economic experts see this as highly problematic and as a hurdle for much needed investments eg. in public infrastructure, education and the public sector. Yet many older people think that getting rid of Schuldenbremse would basically eat away their pension fund, so the conservatives (CDU) want to keep it in place.

5) A general lack of visionairy leadership
Especially in this election, most parties and candidats are just fighting for votes. There are few to almost none politicians, that actually offer a realy vision for germany as the impactful political heart of the EU, that it could be. And voters are usually very concerned with their personal needs, so these reactionairy populist campains gain a lot of foothold.

About the AFD:

The AFD has ties to actual Nazis[Correctiv.org] and some AFD members are under constant observation by the "Verfassungsschutz" (basically, germanys FBI). They are also actively trying to undermine democratic instruments, as they did in the hometown of my parents, where there was extreme lobbying and misinformation for a "Bürgerentscheid" (referendum) on constructing a small wind park. Most of their leaders are also blatantly out of touch with consensus reality and attack the media as biased, when being fact checked. Also, their economic policy would be the worst, that germany had for decades and would weaken the country massively. So basically, they should be ineligible.

BUT (and this is a really big but): There is a significant chunk of voters, that feel like their voice is not being heard within all this and that their past vote didn‘t have any impact. We call it "Politikverdruss". (Yes, we have a word for everything.) They feel like what their country needs most is a anti establishment party. I would say that a good chunck of AFD voters vote for this reason. They are probably not overtly racist or fascist, but they would be fine with supporting structural racism if it serves their personal agenda.
In general, if you want to support corruption, this party is the real deal!! This is also why Musk and Vance like to flirt with them. Because getting them to power would hugely destabilize germany and europe as a whole, which is of interest for US and russion oligarchy.

There has been an agreement in the past by all the other parties to not work together with the AFD. Though this agreement was undermined by the CDU a couple of weeks ago, when they proposed a migration policy with the intention to gain AFD support in the Bundestag. This created massive backlash and some of the biggest protests in the last years (which is good.) But it still feels like doing policy with the AFD is beginning to be normalized.

How I vote:

I will vote for "Die Linke" (the Left Party). This party is the only one that has a quite consistent pedigree of keeping up to their political program. They are also the party that historically take the least money from private donors. Though I disagree with a couple points of their program I support the majority of their policy. So despite those one or two things, that I don't agree with, I decide to vote for them because they are the party with the highest integrity, which is my main criteria for voting.
Though they are historically a opposition party, I feel, they are much needed in the Bundestag to balance far right. Also, they had a quite successful campain in the last weeks. There is actually a rule in the german voting system, that excludes parties from the Bundestag that are below 5% (except for direct mandates) and the left party was below that up to a couple weeks ago. Now they poll at about 7-9%.

Hope this helps someone here out. As I said, feel free to ask if you want to have more details.

[TimStr]

On 20.2.2025 at 11:08 PM, Contrast said:

Here is my assessment of the parties spiral dynamics stages:

AfD: Pure Blue, and maybe with a bit of Red

CDU: a mix of mostly Blue and Orange

FDP: Pure Orange

Greens: Green (duh), and maybe with a bit of Yellow

Linke: Pure Green

BSW: Green and Orange (i think???)

SPD: Yellow and Green

I would say, this looks overrated.

I don't see any stage Yellow in german politics, currently. Maybe some individual people, but definately not whole parties.