Germany will have a national election in fall 2021 and it will be a MAJOR political earthquake. [View all]

[DetlefK]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_German_federal_election#Opinion_polls

The Greens are at best polling better than Merkel's conservatives and at worst polling equal with the conservatives. The polls also show that german voters like the Greens but don't want a government lead by them. But on the other hand, some voters could vote Green just out of sheer curiosity what a green government would be like.

Germany's national election on September 26th 2021 will have two possible results:

1. The Greens get the plurality of votes and form a coalition-government with Merkel's conservatives, which will be an absolute first in Germany's history and will change Germany's political landscape forever.

2. The conservatives get the plurality of votes and form a coalition-government with the Greens, which has only happened on a state-level so far and very rarely. While not truly a historic event, this will further cement The Greens' reputation of being more than tree-huggers and actually being capable of governing responsibly.






The Greens
The original left-wing anti-establishment party of post-WWII Germany. Born out of the extremist far-left movement of the 1960s, for the longest time the party-leaders were people who took part in this movement themselves.
The Greens were junior-partner in the coalition-government of social-democratic Chancellor Schroeder.
For a decade now, the Greens have governed one of Germany's 16 states, thus proving that their ideas aren't that outlandish and that they are capable of governing.

Christian-Democratic Union (CDU)
Conservative, as compared Germany's other parties, but compared to US-politics, Germany's conservatives are like US-Democrats.
Merkel and her lackeys and pre-ordained successors are getting A LOT of flak for mishandling the Corona-crisis. The seemingly arbitrary and contradictory rules on quarantines and lock-downs have really riled up people. Members of Merkel's government are being accused of caring more about building a political career for themselves in the future than about solving the crisis in the present.

Social-Democratic Party of Germany (SPD)
Moderate Left. Used to be Germany's workers-party. That was until they became junior-partner in a coalition-government with Merkel. Merkel took the demands of the Social-Democrats, enacted them, and then took credit for them, depriving the Social-Democrats of their rightful honors.
Nowadays, the Social-Democrats are a political party in search of an identity. Many other german political parties have partially adopted social-democratic demands, depriving the actual Social-Democrats of actual uniqueness to run on.

Free Democratic Party (FDP)
Capitalist liberals. Capitalist like true small-government US-Republicans, but at the same time fervently pro-civil-rights and anti-war.
Labeled as the party of the affluent, they never poll that much, but they also have a reputation for being number-crunchers, professionals and sticklers, so the voters elect them mainly in times of crisis, like right now.

Alternative for Germany (AfD)
Founded as a far-right anti-immigrant party not so long ago, they quickly became a haven for Neo-Nazis and right-wing anti-establishment sentiment.
Interestingly, though german voters have been showing interest in anti-establishment positions lately, the AfD did NOT see a notable uptick in the polls. I guess, this is because the people vote AfD to piss off the mainstream-parties, not because they really expect the AfD to actually solve the real-life problems of real-life people.

The Left (Die Linke)
This party has a complicated and colorful history. Basically founded by a fusion of far-left social-democrats with actual full-blown socialists from East-Germany's socialist dictatorship.
Their heydays were about 10 years ago, as the left-wing anti-establishment party if the Greens were too timid for you.
However, once the AfD came along, it became clear VERY quickly that people didn't vote The Left because they believed in socialist ideas: They voted The Left simply because of anti-establishment sentiment and nowadays The Left has almost faded away into obscurity.