Ask Lemmy

We have Senate and House of Representatives analogues, the AfD will be very influential in the Bundesrat (roughly equivalent to the Senate) because they will be the strongest party in some States but in the Bundestag (HoR), where representation is proportional it's extremely unlikely that they will be able to create a governing coalition, because if the CDU/CSU does that, they imho. will bleed voters all over and not win any election for decades.

But forcing the democratic parties to form an all-encompassing coalition will also be bad for all of them. Still better for the country, but really unstable and basically grind government operations to a minimum consensus for four years.

Our courts are... well okay-ish. They might have some hard conservatives (and will get worse with the AfD able to put judges forward), but generally the courts are seen as stable, fair and guardians of the democratic process. But the democratic process might just not be as crucial as democracy itself, when it's tools are used to get rid of democracy.

All in all, even with Russia puppeteering the AfD, I have way more confidence in the gernan, than in the american public, mostly because the "culture war" hasn't yet overcome the political need for cooperation in our proportional representative system.

The afd is curently the 2nd strongest in the polls but the strongest ist also the very right leaning cdu/csu, together they have the potential of 50% for the next election and there are forces in the cdu/csu that are not strictly opposed to that idea (like the current head of the party: Merz). Some other parts are but the cdu/csu is also very keen on not looking like they have internal struggles, so it's anyone bet if they will actually keep the tadition of being the self proclaimed right most acceptible party and therefore only forming coalition with parties left of them (or arguably on the same level in the case of fdp), or if they give into their own extremist wing.

i hope that afd and cdu/csu just don't get 50% so they have to do cdu/csu + spd + greens or cdu/csu + spd + fdp (sadly the only realistic option atm)

Regarding the forming of a coalition: Even if the AfD gets below 50%(which is very likely) this means, that its not unrealistic that they get into lawmaking. The CDU which currently is the strongest party(before AfD) has a policy to not form a coalition with our leftist party. They also hate the green party and would do reelections before forming a coalition with them. This eliminates(I use the results of the EU elections) about 14% of votes from a CDU coalition. Our current coalition is also very far away from 50% so we ain't gonna have a coalition without the CDU. This wouldn't be to much of a problem, if the CDU wouldn't have transformed into an AfD light party. They uncritically copy points from them and talk about virtually everything they talk about. Initially they declared to not work together with the AfD in any way, but this phrase lost all meaning in the last few years. The current leader also declared, that they are willing to work together with the AfD on lower political levels,because "the citizen wanted them so we will work together with them". This means, that it is not unlikely that they will form a coalition with the AfD. If they manage to get more than 50% of votes in total it is the only viable option of a coalition(OK, to be fair they also might include the BSW).