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47
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With European-American relations at their lowest point in decades, the two most powerful politicians in Europe will soon be Friedrich Merz and Ursula von der Leyen, both Germans. Merz is likely to be the new chancellor of Germany and Von der Leyen is president of the European Commission.
The final results of yesterday's parliamentary election in Germany are not in yet, but the preliminary results give this projection:
This is an ignominious defeat for Chancellor Olaf Scholz and his SPD.
Germany has an interesting rule for elections that most other parliamentary systems do not have. A party needs at least 5.000% of the vote to get any seats in the parliament. If a party gets 5.000% of the votes, it gets 5.000% of the 630 seats, or 32 seats. If it gets 4.972% of the vote, it gets 0% or 0 seats (except in very special circumstances). This means that the number of seats the big parties get depends on whether the small parties pass the 5.000% threshold. It appears that one of small parties, the Left, will make it, but the FDP (Free Democrats) missed. The BSW, a new pro-Russia left-wing party, appears to have gotten 4.972% and thus missed by 13,000 votes out of 59 million, but that could change. If the BSW fails to hit 5.000% in the final count, then the CDU/CSU (conservatives) will have 208 seats in the Bundestag (parliament) and the SPD (social democrats) will have 120 seats. Together they will have 328 seats, more than the 316 needed for a majority and they will be able/forced to govern together. If the final count gives the BSW 13,000 more votes, the CDU/CSU + SPD will fall short and will need a partner, probably the Greens. That will make negotiations much trickier. Just imagine that the U.S. House had 217 Republicans, 216 Democrats, and some totally crazy party nobody will touch with a barge pole with 2 seats. Then the Democrats and Republicans would have to form a coalition, even though they are far apart on everything. Welcome to Germany 2025. Since the CDU/CSU and SPD are miles (OK, kilometers) apart on almost everything, talks about what they will do together could take weeks. One thing they seem to agree on is that letting Vladimir Putin grab any European country he wants is not a good thing. But domestic issues will be tougher.
The neo-Nazi AfD Party did worse than the polls showed it would do, and it is unlikely that endorsements by Elon Musk and J.D. Vance made any difference. Still, Merz was not amused by their interference and said: "Intervention from Washington was no less dramatic and ultimately no less outrageous, than the intervention that we have seen from Moscow." This does not suggest a lot of cooperation between Trump and Merz going forward. Trump's slogan of "America First" might as well have been "America Alone." Imagine what would happen if there is another 9/11-type terrorist attack and Trump asks Merz for help in tracking down the person who planned it and Merz says: "Your problem, not mine."
Here are some of the things Merz will try to do. He will be more successful on issues where the SPD is on the same page as he is.
Somewhat unstated here but very much on the agenda, is reducing the number of immigrants, but not as drastically as the AfD.
Even though Merz is the head of the conservative party, he is far to the left of the Republicans and not really that far from Joe Biden on many issues. One thing that is clear, though, is that Germany now considers the U.S. an unreliable partner and will proceed accordingly.
This is a horrible development for the U.S., as allies will now chart their own courses on many things, and what they do may not be in America's best interests. Think, for example, about ASML, the Dutch company that makes the chip-making machines that makes all the world's advanced chips. Dispensing with Joe Biden's economic diplomacy, they could go back to selling them to China instead of the U.S. because they regard China as a more reliable partner. Think about foreign intelligence services refusing to give critical intel to the U.S. because they don't trust DNI Tulsi Gabbard. There could be a long list.
When it became clear that Olaf Scholz was done for, we got some really good comments from German readers about what had just happened. However, the holidays and other issues didn't allow us to run those in a timely fashion. We'd very much like to run some responses from readers in Germany and/or the rest of Europe giving your views about what happened, or why, or what it means, etc. Please send them to comments@electoral-vote.com, preferably with subject line "Teutonic Shift." (V)