Comments by "Luredreier" (@Luredreier) on "Germany's first election projections see Olaf Scholz and Armin Laschet go neck-and-neck | DW News" video.

Not quite. Sao traditionally the party with the most votes is asked to try to form a coalition first I believe (I'm not German, but their system in this regard is similar to ours here in Norway, minus the king here in Norway). So since it looks like CDU/CSU has a tiny bit more votes they'll probably be asked to try to form a coalition first (unless that changes and SPD manages to get a couple more votes). However if CDU/CSU fails to form a coalition government that's able to get a majority of the German parliament to vote for them then the second biggest party gets a shot at trying to form a government, then the third biggest, fourth biggest etc till there either is a coalition that manages to get a majority to support them forming a government (although that doesn't necessarily mean that all the representatives that votes for them necessarily are in parties that takes part in the actual cabinet) or there's a majority in favour of a new election. At least that's how I believe their system works. I could be wrong in some of those details. But in theory if there's neither any other majority proposal available out there nor enough support for a new election then the linke could try to form a coalition with them holding the Chancellor. Theory, in reality there would of course be a new election long before that happened. But yes, this will most likely end up with one of the two biggest parties holding the chancellorship. Although I don't think that it's impossible that the Greens gets it in order for one of the big two to get power if the horse trading between the parties goes in that direction. Although a coalition between CSU/CDU might be more likely. I'm not familiar enough with German politics to determine what's more likely of those two options. One possible combination could perhaps be SPD or CDU + Greens + FDP. FDP + the greens have 26% of the votes together, so together they could give either SPD or CSU/CDU a government option that doesn't include the other big party. and being biggest in a coalition has advantages. The greens would probably prefer SPD. FDP would probably prefer CDU/CSU although I don't think they're ruling out a coalition with SPD. Linke isn't powerful enough to make a difference right now and mainly matters because if they fall below 5% the seats they'd have would go to other parties. Of course all of this is just a first glance based on proportional representation. Germany uses MMP and I'm not sure exactly how much that will influence things, and I'm also not sure if every vote is of equal value in Germany. In my own country northern votes are more valuable with fewer voters pr representative up there then in high population density areas like the capital. So the exact maths of the number of seats involved is likely to be more complicated then what we see at 3:04.
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As far as I can tell this is a fair election. Russia isn't that powerful yet. It follows the same trends that European and indeed world elections have taken lately. Voters are increasingly preferring alternatives to the establishment, but the established parties are still the strongest, but in parliamentary systems they're increasingly forced to rely on support from smaller coalition partners, while in systems where there's two major parties that's unfairly advantaged like in many of the anglophone countries the fringe factions within the parties ends up growing in relative power, sometimes like in the case of Trump and Boris Johnson taking power at the cost of the establishment. No, this is clearly a fair election in terms of the results given the electoral systems at play. I would still have preferred a different election result however. I'm a former SV voter here in Norway and currently vote MDG. The German equivalent of those two parties are not getting a chancellor. Still, at least the Greens are doing good at 15%
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@scanida5070 I wish Germany didn't have its 5% rule. If it didn't then perhaps it would be possible for AFD to split up into a extremist party and a moderate party and who knows, perhaps with some time in government that moderate party would become somewhat sane... Either that or they'll need to deal with their racists and get a bit more moderate then spend some time in government. I'm a green voter myself in my own country. But it looks like they represent the rural and nationalist voters in Germany, and those needs representation, and if they don't get it from non-racists they'll end up voting for the racists... AfP can't be denied forever. A party similar to SP here in Norway might have done Germany good. They'd fight against the EU and the process of making it a united states of Europe, perhaps aiming for a more confederal approach (they'd probably prefer to leave, but coalitions can stop that from happening). And they'd probably prefer less immigration, but might not be as fanatical about that as a true racist party is. And they could take on that anti-establishment ruralist interest role. For those of us that want more immigration we could perhaps work with them and get their support in return for acknowledging their concerns about cultural dilution with things like improved integration measures, teaching local cultural values etc... Peasants/Farmers tends to be pragmatists, you can work with them even if they're often quite conservative. The far right however are usually too fanatical to be reasoned with.
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If another coalition proposal with a chancellor from a different party is able to get a majority in the parliament, then sure. But I doubt that's going to happen this election. But really, the Chancellor isn't that important. The relative power of the parties that the Chancellor is cooperating with, does.
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I'm a green voter here in Norway, so I'm of course also hoping for an alternative. Preferably SPD+ the Greens somehow. How likely are FDP to support SPD + the Greens either within a coalition or supporting them running a minority government? The left doesn't look like they're going to be relevant unless the balance of power changes enough to make them king makers. That looks unlikely right now. Just like my own Greens here ended up not required for a majority coalition. :-/
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@janr9985 I hope so. That said, it looks like SPD + Greens + the left + that one "other" representative is plausible too.
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@kukulroukul4698 You're saying that to someone who is voting for a party with less than 4% of the votes in my country. A vegetarian who has taken part in plenty of demonstrations. We might not get the election results that we need, but that's because people don't always agree with us. It takes time to change peoples minds. We managed to change the election debate, but we're probably not going to be able to put a complete stop to our oil and gas production just yet. So you can keep using gas for cooking for a few more years it seems like.
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@234zuscoutjango9 I live in Norway, the representative in our parliament this election with the fewest votes got in with 0,2% of the votes. We have 169 seats in our parliament, 150 of those are proportional with no lower limit for the percentage of the votes required. Only 19 seats have a 4% requirement, that's our leveling seats. For a small party that could make the difference between 1-5 seats and 7-10 seats in some cases as the leveling seats are given to parties based on the national vote rather than the individual electoral circle, but we don't have first past the post electoral circles like in the German MMP system. Instead we just have 19 electoral circles within 150 seats distributed between them an one leveling seat for each of them. Yes, having many parties can make creating a coalition complicated. But the problem of the Weimar Republic wasn't too many parties but too few. When the communists and socialists refused to cooperate there wasn't enough viable alternative paths towards power. Only a extremist right wing coalition ended up being possible. Compare that to this election where there was 6 different coalition options on the table in Germany, if two parties refused to cooperate a viable alternative would be guaranteed. Bigger parties tends to be too confident and not good enough at making compromises. If they don't behave it's harder for the electorate to actually deal with them and get a proper alternative in place.
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@GTA5Player1 Quite the country. Any time someone does not feel represented by the political system they start looking for alternative paths towards relevance. And I'm sure that Germany has experienced enough terrorism in the seventies to know that disgruntled citizens can be quite problematic... The fall of the Soviet Union might have helped, but the presence of Die Linke in your parliament is probably just as important in avoiding a modern "Rote Armee Fraktion" as the political changes further east. If you allowed more smaller parties then perhaps some of your current parties could split up into their current factions giving people more real options instead of forcing everyone into a few big parties. Germany is bigger than Norway, has way more seats in your parliament, and more diversity, yet you have less parties represented. The best way you can possibly reduce your conflict levels is by ensuring that more people are represented and by splitting up the political identities into smaller ones that are easier to deal with. Some of the values of AfD could perhaps be meet without turning to racism if they could be represented in another party. There's certainly room for a party between communists and labour in a country. Conservativism can take more than one form, CDU/CSU isn't the only possible answer for that. The 3 direct seat exception to the 5% rule helps, but is still problematic in my view. 5% is just way, way too high, and the exception relies on a fundamentally unfair first past the post system. I see what they tried to achieve with that system, and I agree with many of the fundamental ideas, but there's other ways to implement those ideas that avoids some of its pitfalls. Like the focus on person over politics caused by a system where you are voting for people rather than parties. You can ensure local representation without turning to the first past the post system. The German system is only fair when it comes to the relationship between the bigger parties, not to the smaller ones the way I see it. However it's your country, not mine. I'm just glad that we don't have to deal with it.
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