After 16 years of being the German chancellor, Angela Merkel stepped down from her job, which means that in the recent elections, Germany had to find a worthy successor for her.
“Preliminary results suggest her absence deeply hurt her Christian Democratic Union party.” In these elections, the Social Democratic Party, Merkel’s “traditional center-left rival”, won. However, in Germany, parties need at least a 50% majority to govern the country. When people vote for parties, these parties get seats in the German parliament. Based on the number of seats, the parties then form coalitions with each other, to reach the 50% minimum.
It will still take some time until the parties have reached a coalition agreement on who will actually govern the country.
According to Kai Schwägerl, a senior at Morningside, “it’s been one of the most difficult elections for a long time in Germany.” Kai’s opinion on the outcome of the elections reflects the opinion of a vast majority of Germans. “Merkel was there for so long, and now she’s gone. And nobody really knows what to do.”
From Kai’s standpoint, the biggest party in Germany, the CDU, had to lose a lot of votes, which is exactly what happened. In addition to that, Kai also liked that the Green Party got a lot of votes, because “that’s going to be an important topic for the future”.
Nevertheless, Kai also thinks that this election was pretty similar to a lot of elections worldwide. He thinks that the SPD, the Green party, and the FDP are going to be the parties that will end up reigning the country, which doesn’t necessarily represent the best option. According to him, “there’s nothing better out there. It is just the lesser evil.”
Similar to this, Constantin Tschernig, a Junior here at Morningside, is happy with the way the election results came out, but he doesn’t think a lot will change. In Consti’s opinion, the new government is only going to care more about climate change, but it is not the “ideal type of government.” He, unlike Kai, didn’t vote but Consti is not the only German on campus that didn’t vote. Usame Suud, a former Morningside student, also didn’t vote in Germany.
For Consti, not voting had a pretty fair reason, as he said that it would be too much work for him to actually vote. Consti “would have voted in Germany, and I would have informed myself more.” Voting in Germany, from another country, is a long process. There is a deadline of 2 months prior to voting, that you have to apply for by filling out a form. Usame, wasn’t able to vote because he requested the mail vote, but missed the deadline to apply for it. He “requested it a month before the actual election” but he couldn’t vote anymore.
Looking at the results of the election, Usame thinks the coalitions resulting from these votes are all going to be good. “Whatever coalition ends up being the actual government is going to bring some change from the politics from the last 10 or 15 years.”