Germany will elect a new government seven months early after the acrimonious collapse of the previous one in November, the country's president confirmed Friday morning as the Bundestag was dissolved.
It's time for a liberal democratic “competition of ideas” to find “the best solutions to the challenges of our time” including economic stagnation, mass immigration and wars in Europe and the Middle East, the German president says Said on the occasion of the dissolution of Parliament (Parliament) Friday morning. President Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the current domestic and global environment requires a “government that can take action” and that the current Bundestag constitution prevents it.
Today's dissolution of Parliament legally confirms the February 23 date agreed weeks ago between the main political parties for the next federal election. Since then, President Steinmeier had considered whether it would be possible to form another government with the Bundestag in its current state, but concluded that this was not possible and that early elections were therefore inevitable.
Current national opinion polls show right-wing parties holding an overwhelming lead in the race to replace the defunct left-green-centrist coalition. However, the desire to exclude the right-wing sovereigntist Alternative for Germany (AfD) from power, even at the expense of its introduction, has led to the establishment of a tradition by the right-wing centrist Christian Democratic Union ( could see them frozen out of power by the CDU. Many more years of left-wing government ministries.
Current opinion polls show the CDU's approval rating in the low 30s, the highest it has been in years, while the AfD hovers around 20%. This number may be slightly lower than the AfD's all-time high in polls, but if it comes to the polls it would double its vote share in the last Bundestag elections in 2021 and make it Germany's second-largest party. Probably.
Both the left-wing SPD and the Green Party have seen their popularity plummet during their time in power, and are currently in the mid-teens. Junior coalition partner Liberal FDP has fared even worse, staying in the low single digits with an approval rating of around 4% all year. This is a serious issue under Germany's constitution, which means that parties with less than 5 percent of the national vote may be prevented from gaining any elected representation.
The outgoing German government is currently being kept in place as an “interim” government until a snap election to elect a new federal parliament in February, seven months early, due to fundamental differences between the coalition parties over spending. It had collapsed on the moon. Indeed, the end came on the day President-elect Donald Trump's election results were announced, and at the time his return was cited as a factor in abandoning the coalition.
As stated at the time, Germany's weak and contentious Progressive Party, which has struggled to agree on basic policy issues, could be dominated by a newly energized President Trump. The rest of the world saw him as hopelessly out of his depth.
