MeidasTouch: MUSK LOSES BIG IN GERMANY. AfD is now likely to be completely shut out of the governing coalition.

[highplainsdem]

MUSK LOSES BIG IN GERMANY

Germany’s CDU/CSU wins big, while the far-right AfD underperforms in second—despite backing from Elon Musk and JD Vance.

AfD is now likely to be completely shut out of the governing coalition.

— MeidasTouch (@meidastouch.com) 2025-02-23T17:51:26.464Z

MeidasTouch
‪@meidastouch.com‬

MUSK LOSES BIG IN GERMANY

Germany’s CDU/CSU wins big, while the far-right AfD underperforms in second—despite backing from Elon Musk and JD Vance.

AfD is now likely to be completely shut out of the governing coalition.

[Hugin]

1. I'm still holding my breath.

Should I be?

[highplainsdem]

7. No need to do that.

[hlthe2b]

2. Still an explosion of support since WWII and that is scary as hell.

[highplainsdem]

8. It's disappointing, but a map I saw showed AfD support primarily in what was East Germany, and

it'll be interesting to see demographic breakdowns and whether that's mostly older voters.

There was a huge turnout across the entire country. I'm seeing reports of 84% turnout, the most in nearly.40 years. Musk might have helped the AdD, but Musk and Trump also turned out more people voting against the AfD.

[creon]

33. C orrect

I noticed exactly the same thing.
Looks like that region is prone that sort of extremism

[highplainsdem]

14. Found an article explaining AfD support:

https://theconversation.com/these-maps-of-support-for-germanys-far-right-afd-lay-bare-the-depth-of-the-urban-rural-divide-248405

It’s clear by looking at the map that most (though not all) of the AfD’s strongholds are in eastern Germany – the region which used to be the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Fascism and Nazism were outlawed by decree when this anti-fascist state was established but, in reality, far-right ideologies don’t die off that easily. The result was that extremist views survived in an environment where there was also a lack of education on the National Socialism of the past – and a lack of education about democracy.

When the socialist authoritarian GDR regime fell in 1989, Germany was reunified under western conditions. This had various effects, including a sense that the experiences of the east were not valued. The inequalities between the two sides of the reunified nation have left some in the east feeling distant from the state. The AfD’s version of nationalism finds fertile ground here.

Another pattern is also clear across the whole country: the AfD is stronger in remote and rural areas and weaker in urban centres. There is less support in cities such as Berlin, Cologne, Dresden, Hamburg, Leipzig, Munich and Stuttgart. Places with more globalised cultures, international business and diverse populations remain comparably resilient to the spread of the far right.

So. The same urban/rural split we see, plus the old East Germany where Nazi ideas survived, much more than in West Germany. The "lack of education about democracy" is especially telling.

I wish AfD had less support now. But I really think that Musk and Trump will turn more countries against the right than toward the right.

[hlthe2b]

21. re: "far-right ideologies don't die off that easily"...

Yeah. When I was a teen and had a stop-over in Munich for a few days with my parents (en route elsewhere for work), we visited beer halls (Hofbräuhaus) there and since I was the only one of the four of us who spoke any German I enjoyed intermixing with the locals on those long tables drinking warm beer. And yeah, it was more prominently an older crowd with men wearing their traditional Tyrolean hats with any number of emblematic pins. But, the more I spoke with and observed these gregarious older men in their 70s and 80s--I saw buried less conspicuously on those hats--you guessed it- a Swastika. I was shocked.

Years later I had occasion to work briefly with an Argentine woman--probably in her 50s at the time who was the progeny of a former Nazi father (or at least a former German military officer) who had fled to Argentina after the war (along with many others). I spoke with her about that a bit and she talked about it as though we were speaking of someone who had been at Woodstock. They retained at least a modicum of pride for those times and despite the universal horror at what happened, that just did not go away.

[highplainsdem]

27. I posted a message about Peter Thiel here recently that described a South African town where he

spent part of his childhood as still very openly pro-Nazi then.

[Evolve Dammit]

50. JD Vance's bestie. Don Jr recommended JD to Thiel for bankrolling.

[stillcool]

25. thanks for that

makes perfect sense. Love when that happens!

[LuvLoogie]

48. So, Racism...

Like here.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

16. AFD Lite MAGA got nearly 50% of the vote here.

[highplainsdem]

19. AfD support is nearly 2/3 male:

www.statista.com/statistics/1478110/afd-voter-profile-age

[JohnSJ]

3. No need to, the us has taken over that.

[RandySF]

4. It's still a frightening amount of support.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

17. AFD Lite MAGA received nearly 50% of the support here.

[markodochartaigh]

40. I don't know if maga

is afd lite or just really equivalent to afd, or in some areas further to the reich-wing. I think that support for national health care is far higher among the afd than among maga in Texas or Idaho for example.

Also maga really only received about 33% of the support in the last election. The bad news is that about 33% didn't really care either way. As long as they get their hamberders and sportsball they just don't care.

[TheProle]

5. Germany's Merz claims victory for his conservatives as exit polls put far right on strong showing

German opposition leader Friedrich Merz’s conservatives were on course for a lackluster victory in the country’s national election Sunday, while Alternative for Germany nearly doubled its support, the strongest showing for a far-right party since World War II, exit polls showed.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats were headed for a stinging defeat and a likely third-place finish with their worst postwar result in a national parliamentary election, the exit polls for ARD and ZDF public television indicated.

https://apnews.com/article/germany-election-merz-scholz-far-right-afd-ebf16ed38e0beaff7fed9a6d29b32a24

[LeftInTX]

46. Ugh

[SheltieLover]

6. Kudos to our German friends for exercising common sense & voting sensibly!

[rollin74]

9. Das ist gut

[Cattledog]

10. Can someone explain who the other Party's are: Left, right, etc.

[DavidDvorkin]

11. On the contrary, Musk and the AFD won big

AFD won't be in the upcoming coalition. That was clear before the election. But they're projected to have 20% of the vote and 145 seats (out of 630 total). That's the best showing for the right wing since the end of WWII.

It's a terrifying result.

[brakester]

34. Not good, but

it is still a small minority. That gives me hope.

[WarGamer]

43. Exactly... Meidas spreading nonsense again.

[LW1977]

54. Ok Debbie

What about Feline AIDS? Is it still the number 1 killer of domesticated cats? MEOW MEOW

[DavidDvorkin]

56. WTF?

[Initech]

12. Excellent! Fuck you Elon!

Thank you Germany! Now get the asshole for trying to interfere in the election!

[malaise]

13. Sweei

Rec

[DFW]

15. If this what Meidas said, he is all wet and completely missed the mark

The far right AfD nearly doubled their already disturbing 10+% from just four years ago. My wife, who is German, can’t decide whether to burst into tears or throw plates and glasses at the wall in frustration.

This is a call for celebrating???? This is a fucking disaster. In Germany, of all places, almost every fifth vote goes to a party that barely skirts the legitimate side of the anti-Nazi laws on the books, and the far left “die Linken,” a thinly disguised leftist version of the AfD, home to many former members of the “kill them at the wall” old East German regime, got over 8%. So more than every fourth vote went to an extremist party.

The new chancellor, Merz (early chance to pronounce it right: MAIRtz—mair like hair), is a center-right abused ego who thought he should have been chancellor two election cycles ago.

The only party leaders with any common sense were the current chancellor, Scholz, who was dragged under by a party drowning in the bureaucracy and bureaucrats they couldn’t stop creating, and the Greens leader, Robert Habeck, who was the ONLY party leader who publicly said that he and his party made mistakes and didn’t know everything. Both lost ground (natürlich) compared to four years ago.

This is NOT a result to be celebrating, I’m afraid. Merz likes it because he finally gets to be chancellor. So did Yertle the Turtle, and remember how that turned out for him. The AfD likes it because it made them the party with the second-highest number of votes in the country, trending upwards.

Do NOT smile and clap at this result, my friends. It is NOT good.

[TheProle]

18. But all caps...

And a Bluesky link…

[DFW]

24. Yeah, funny thing about that

But while he’s selling his “paid memberships,” we who live in Germany have to live in the real world. Don’t bother to “play the clip.” We’re here on the ground watching it unfold in real time. It is not pretty.

[TheProle]

26. Stay safe

There’s apparently a thin line between “getting in front of a narrative” and peddling delusion, made all the more shameful by the fact that folks are desperate for good news.

Beware of anyone monetizing spin.

[Cheezoholic]

39. If something looks like a Tennessee Firecracker stand that's what you'll usually get, overpriced firecrackers lol n/t

[elleng]

35. ;-(

[dalton99a]

20. +1

[highplainsdem]

22. Musk wanted an AfD victory and had been spreading the lie that a mock election youth vote showed

a big win for AfD.

Link to tweet

[calguy]

31. Medias is nothing but a click-bait site

Huge, misleading titles for every one of their videos, which totally misrepresent the half-baked content of their videos. I weaned them from my information sources long ago.

[JoseBalow]

47. It's ONE of the WORST of THE worst, just garbage CLICKBAIT

CHECKMATE!!1!

[highplainsdem]

32. An article from the Independent yesterday referred to fears that AfD would get a quarter of the vote,

which might have let it form a coalition to govern:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/elon-musk-afd-germany-election-b2702851.html

I'm unhappy with AfD's gains, too, but I'd bet Musk is extremely unhappy they didn't do better. My impression of his posts on X is that he's believed his interference in foreign elections can quickly sweep far-right parties into power.

He's likely to fail in Canada and the UK, too, and the disaster he and Trump are creating here will likely turn more voters in other countries against his fascist message.

[DFW]

44. The pundits here in Germany gave 21% as a worst case sceario.

They weren’t far off.

So far (alas, no guarantees) neither of the big traditional parties has even hinted at a crack in their stance of no working with the AfD on a national level, ever, period.

But forever is a long time in the game of politics, where a month can be an eternity under certain circumstances.

[highplainsdem]

36. I found a Wikipedia page with the most recent pre-election polls in Germany, and if what I've heard

about election results so far is correct, it looks as though AfD slightly underperformed and SPD slightly overperformed the average late poll results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_2025_German_federal_election

Which would also be bad news for Musk.

[DFW]

41. Except for one minor detail

That the AfD was expected to get 20% in the first place is scandalous and horrifying. The fact that they came within less of one point of that is not a consolation prize. It’s like telling the condemned man that his firing squad will consist of only six shooters instead of seven.

[newdeal2]

42. It's all relative

After what has happened in the USA, this might look like a better outcome than the worst case scenario.

[Ocelot II]

45. That's consistent with what I just heard from someone who lives there -

an American currently working in Heidelberg, who's in a Zoom art class I've been taking. She and her friend, a guy from Prague who also takes the class, said a lot of the support for AfD is based in former GDR, but it's been growing, and they are very worried that AfD will have a strong influence on whatever coalition government is formed. They are really concerned about AfD's increasing power. They have the same attitude (and fear) that we have here for Trump/Musk. I'd like to think Meidas is correct but this report, and yours, suggest that he's much too optimistic.

[highplainsdem]

60. The AfD had been at 12.6% in 2017's election, though, before dipping to 10.3% in 2021. And it had been polling

as high as 15% support in the polls in 2016 (I'm using Wikipedia for data). As high as 22% in the polls in January of last year. And it couldn't get 22% in this election, even with Musk doing all he could to help.

It's been trending upwards, but not as sharply and steadily as looking at just the 2021 election and today's would suggest.

And what happened today did show that Musk's interference isn't always effective, which is good news not only for Germany but for the UK, Canada and other countries where he's tempted to meddle.

Plus the Trump/Musk admin is already seeming so incompetent that they could very well make similar RW parties less appealing.

[UTUSN]

23. K&R for, Hear Hear!

[elleng]

28. Not 'losing big,' according to MSNBC, re: German results;

Right-wing German party doing better than since end of WW !!, with 20%, so sounds like different undertanding of effects.

[kansasobama]

52. Exactly, liberals are in their own bubble

It is horrible news. This should really act as a warning for us to fight harder in the U.S.

[True Dough]

29. Best news I've heard all day

Suck it, Eloon!

[peggysue2]

30. Congrats to our German friends!

Hold the line and embarrass the hell out of our own radical, wanna-be overlords whose overreach failed.

[thinkingagain]

37. I'm confused as usual

( but for my defense I have a lot of stuff happening in my fam right now so my brain is all over the place )

Is this a good thing your saying because the headline email I got from
MY Times sounds as if the bad guys are winning ? I don’t have a subscription so can’t read it
Only get short news alerts )


Breaking news: Germany’s centrist conservatives leading in early exit polls

Friedrich Merz Appears Poised to Be Germany’s Next Leader

The centrist conservatives are in the lead, with the far-right AfD in second, early exit polls showed. The vote appears to be a rebuke to the nation’s left-leaning government.

[orangecrush]

38. Best news I've heard since this started.

[LeftInTX]

49. The conservatives won.

BERLIN (AP) — Germany’s conservative opposition leader Friedrich Merz won a lackluster victory in a national election Sunday, while Alternative for Germany nearly doubled its support, the strongest showing for a far-right party since World War II, projections showed.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz conceded defeat for his center-left Social Democrats after what he called “a bitter election result.” Projections for ARD and ZDF public television showed his party finishing in third place with its worst postwar result in a national parliamentary election.

Merz vowed to move quickly to put together a coalition government. But that’s likely to be a complicated task.

https://apnews.com/article/germany-election-merz-scholz-far-right-afd-ebf16ed38e0beaff7fed9a6d29b32a24

Merz is saying AfD won't be part of the new coalition, but who knows?

[kansasobama]

51. Musk did not lose big

Far right party is the 2nd leading vote getter. It is bad news

[nycbos]

53. The far right went from 4% in 2017 to 20% today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_German_federal_election

It's alarming as hell.

[roamer65]

55. 80 pct against AfD.

Big L for tRumsk.

[moondust]

57. DW says

AfD is already getting fired up to take the lead in 2029.

I'd be curious to know how many points TSF, JD, and Muskrat added to the AfD vote tally.

[highplainsdem]

58. They added zero, if AfD had been up to 22% support in opinion polls early last year, and was

up to 22% again six weeks ago, but didn't do that well in today's election, despite nonstop pro-AdF propaganda from Musk and some help from Vance in recent weeks. They might have motivated more peoplen to vote just to vote against AfD. Turnout today was higher than it had been in decades.

[moondust]

59. Well...

Last edited Sun Feb 23, 2025, 09:57 PM - Edit history (2)

I've heard some commentators suggest that TSF, JD, and Muskrat have done a lot to normalize far right/fascist ideas and it has helped the far right in Germany, France, UK, etc. AfD doubled their support this time over the last time.

Sky News just reported that record turnout was 83+% and the far right gains were largely among young people.