Why Germany's Coalition is Reaching Breaking Point

Scholz's coalition suffered heavily at the recent European elections, winning less than a third of the popular vote collectively. So in this video, we'll look at the results, why the coalition is so unpopular and how tensions might escalate further.

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[contrarian]

Olaf already forgot the election results. Nothing to see, business as usual.

[jimanyon]

The FDP jumping the coalition is very unlikely, because of their unpopularity they are close to the 5% cutoff to enter the parlament.

[chronomatomkairos]

Please, please go back to using bar charts or something else. These ring graphs are unclear at best and seem convoluted at worst. It is just not possible to get a good grasp of how much percent one section is out of the total - especially with the grey parts in between (are these spacers? Or are these votes for none of the shown parties? And if that is the case, why are they distributed over the whole ring and are not bunched up in one place?)

[zeno]

Im a big fan of TLDR, but i think you are buying in to much into the whole “the german goverment is going to collapse“. This discusion in the media is pointless, unless something big happens the coalition is going to stick together.

[earthmember]

scholz is a coward, a very passive chanselor.

[kevinkerkhoff]

3:44 FYI the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung is a foundation close to the CDU. Now that doesn't mean they are wrong about the exit polls, but I just wanted to let you know that for the future.

[sebastiansteidle]

Just so we are clear. It is imposible to blame old people for these results again. Young people at the age of 16 were also allowed to vote and they also voted for the AfD.

[catriona_drummond]

It would help the coalition a lot if it actually had a chancellor not this absolute vacuum called Scholz.

[DarkHarlequin]

People are very focused on the AFD and disdain for the greens from the right but the real thing here is that (more than any policy or stance) the AFD managed one feat: they managed to make people who felt ignored and left behind by the mayor parties, feel seen!
The SPD used to be the 'workers party' and I'm not sure even they remember that. Blue collar workers no longer feel seen or represented by them. It's less severe but similar for the conservative middle class with the CDU. The world right now is scary and it's changing and people are looking to their leaders for support and solutions. And as long as the mayor parties refuse to accept that the broad 'avoid all hard choices - go with the flow' politics of the last 10-15 years don't make people feel represented, if they don't manage to reconnect with the people they claim to represent, then people will flock to those who to make them feel like they give a sh***! Even if it's just empty platitudes and populist slogans...

[Valaki-figl]

It is important to say that the AfD actually was polling at around 25 percent at their height but they dropped in the polls until they reached their current result. They’d have come 3rd if the coalition, and by extension SPD wasn’t so unpopular. Reaching 2nd place isn’t the AfD’s own success but arguably a result of the SPD’s unpopularity.

[neodym]

No. The European Parliament election will not decide on the coalitions future. And Germany values stability, parties calling snap elections are seen negatively. The FDP would not get in next parliament if they jump ship.

Fun fact: Merz, the leader of the CDU, is even more unpopular than Scholz.

[oventuno]

the ascension of far-right parties is due to austerity policies and degradation of standard of living.

[NewDealDem]

Logic for why FDP would be ‘better off ditching’? Why would it be better being a small, irrelevant party out of government than a small, relevant party in government?they would lose all influence for their policies…

[WadeHutchinson_]

As popular as Rishi Sunak? As a German, that's not something to be celebrated.

[jadnb]

The CDU did not win in every west German state. Hamburg and Bremen are also states and those were won by SPD and The Greens respectively

[caseclosed]

You know, I didn’t even know the AfD’s name was a play on a Merkel quote until I read the TooLong newspaper…

[kosinusify]

Are they, though? The coalition has been in crisis mode ever since the sunmer of 2022. They're used to it.

[AncientKing]

Not only the coalition but the whole country

[AlphaHorst]

The FDP blocking further spending is actually one of the reasons why some voters ditched them. The FDP is usually voted whenever people want a somewhat diverse coalition (hardline FDP voters are less than 3-4% meaning if noone votes them to form a coalition they do net get into the Bundestag)
So the FDP blocking spending on supporting Ukraine or the energy transition is what is driving down their voteshare.
People who actually want to votr for less spending vote the AfD, because the "less spending" they want can be directly translated to "let russia have all of ukraine"

[ArmchairMagpie]

The FDP has been Germany's most fervent opposition party this term. After the next election, they can continue this newfound tradition by joining the extra-parliamentary opposition (also called APO in German).

Also, as an East German I can tell that people never really liked the coalition to begin with, and after the pandemic and the Ukraine war things went very south. The Green party's agenda hasn't ever been popular here, so it doesn't surprise me that in the face of the recent crisis, their issues are even less popular now. Let's face it, this election has also been an election against climate change related policies. As far as it concerns this topic, things will be dead in the water for at least the next four years now. An existential issue has been reneged down to optionality, and it didn't help that the Green party took every bait thrown by the FDP. They communicated their policies poorly and made some significant procedural errors on the way when it came to the Buildings Energy Act - also in part due to the FDPs campaign against, in addition to some staff-related scandals that wouldn't have been an issue if it happened to a conservative party.

However, the thing that is even more shocking is that the SPD is losing massively with workers now, and historically, it has never been a good sign when workers turn towards the far-right. The AfD is against every policy that is in place to protect them and the even more poor, yet it is a sign of how bad the SPD actually has become in convincing their core clientele. The SPD itself has become way more conservative during the Merkel era due to the political emergence of the conservative Seeheim Circle within the party.

The irony is, many problems that were attempted to be fixed were the results of a one and a half decades of conservative dragging of feet and sitting out crucial problems. Yet, they were so complex and intertwined with contemporary crisis that it was an uphill battle from the start. The CDU denied their own statements, political comments and demands they made in the past and went to the election campaign with it. But it is, as they say, in Germany being conservative is a baseline stance. There isn't a point where you have to apologize or correct your course, you don't need to pay high social capital to push through even the most controversial policies and disastrous decisions. People could be drowning in their houses because of their government denying spending money for flood protection, and they would still vote their own executioners into office.

It is also the same silly austerity policies, that the EU South learned to love-hate under Merkel, that hamstrings the current coalition. It's like economic liberals have a mortal fear of running big investment programs in fear of losing bond credibility. As if that would ever happen.