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Wolfgang Merkel: Candidates, Chancellors and Coalitions: Who Won the Elections?

“It was primarily a victory for Olaf Scholz and not for the SPD as a party,” our Senior Research Fellow, Wolfgang Merkel writes in his article published on The Progressive Post.

“Germany has voted. The winners are the Social Democrats. The Christian Democrats fell to a historic low, the Greens gained fewer voters than expected, the FDP was slightly strengthened, the AfD remained relatively stable with slight losses and the left, die Linke, was halved,” he writes, adding that Angela Merkel, “the eternal chancellor” did not run again, and this “created a political vacuum” in the country.

According to Wolfgang Merkel, SPD candidate Olaf Scholz made no mistakes. “Because of the numerous mistakes and misconduct of [CDU-candidate] Laschet and [Green-candidate] Baerbock, he quickly appeared to be the only one electable as chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. And: persons and personalities matter in times of massive voter dealignment,” he writes.

“Two parties are no longer enough to govern. Even a renewed ‘grand coalition’, which nobody wants anymore, would be the most minimal of all minimalist winning coalitions,” he continues, and argues that “there are only two realistic coalition options: ‘Jamaica’ (after the colors commonly associated with the CDU/CSU – black –, the Greens, and the FDP – yellow, which feature in the Jamaican flag) and a ‘traffic light’ coalition (SPD, Greens, FDP).”

Read the full article here

Cover image: Wikimedia Commons
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