Germany has national election in February and far-right is in 2nd place in polls.

[DetlefK]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_German_federal_election

Due to how Germany's electoral system is structured, it has become impossible over the last 2 or so decades for a single party to get enough parliamentary seats to form a government. The result is that several parties pool their seats together and sign a temporary cooperation-agreement, a coalition, to form a government.

Germany's party-landscape is very diverse, with votes spread out over so many parties, that the current government was a coalition of 3 parties:
Social-Democrats (center-left)
Greens (environmentalist, left)
Free Democrats (socially liberal capitalists, center-right)

The Free Democrats (a rather arrogant bunch, tbh) had some issue with the budget of the Social-Democrat Chancellor. Words were said, feelings were hurt, political threats were made, the situation escalated. The Chancellor sought to blackmail the Free Democrats back in line by holding a vote of confidence: "Support me or this government is finished and you lose your leverage."

Well, he lost. And elections have been announced for February 23rd 2025.



The Social-Democrat Chancellor is again running for office, but he is in third place in the polls, at 15%. He is a weak flim-flamy kind of guy when it comes to foreign-policy, e.g. Ukraine, and way back when he was mayor of Hamburg he was involved in a shady corruption-scandal that was never resolved. Lots of political baggage.

Second place, at 18%, is the AfD, "Alternative for Germany" (anti-immigrant pro-Russia Neonazis). They almost became state-government in one of Germany's states, however they tried to pull a publicity-stunt by abusing parliamentary procedure and it backfired massively in court, exposing them that EVEN AS THEY WERE ON THE CUSP OF REAL POLITICAL POWER FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER IN THEIR PARTY'S HISTORY they sabotaged themselves for the sake of trolling and social-media stunts. Their opponents on the left will use this incident to label them as too incompetent to govern.

In the lead, at 32%, is the candidate of the Christian-Democrats (moderate conservative, center-right). The Christian-Democrats are old-school political establishment, but their candidate is a fresh face who has spent the majority of his political career working behind the scenes. While the Christian-Democrats at large have a fairly moderate approach to immigration, their candidate is famously anti-immigrant, particularly about foreign criminal organizations in Germany.
I think, his law&order anti-immigrant persona will rather work to his advantage against the AfD, preventing them from sucking voters away from center-right to the far-right.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Ach, Scheiss!