AFD: somewhat libertarian, socially conservative and anti-mass immigration. Also increasingly Euroskeptic. The only party worth voting for.
"Union" is the CDU/CSU. Basically European "center-right" pro-globalist, pro-mass immigration, pro-EU but might lower your taxes a bit. The CSU or Christian Social Union is the Bavarian regional version of the same national party, but tends to be a bit more conservative.
FDP are the Free Democrats: Neoliberal, pro-corporate, pro-free trade, open-borders and rabidly pro-EU. Socially also very liberal.
The SPD are your typical European Social Democrats, very pro-immigration, welfare-state-loving Eurocrats.
The Greens are the usual eco-commies.
The Left is basically a holdover from the GDR. Their main support base is still in the former East German states and they are unabashedly communist.
The BSW split off from the left, but still favors all the same commie policies, except that they also pretend to be Euroskeptic and anti-mass immigration. It seems pretty obvious at this point that the BSW was entirely astroturfed. More and more people in the industrial cities in East Germany were abandoning the Left party for the AFD, which the globalist establishment viewed as a much bigger threat, so they manufactured a schism in the Left party to try to siphon some of those working class votes from the AFD to the BSW, and there was a massive media manipulation campaign aimed at convincing people that the establishment were just as afraid of the BSW as they were of the AFD.
But then the BSW won seats in several state elections this past fall, and immediately ruled out governing with the AFD in favor of forming coalitions with the mainstream parties. That's what began their downward slide in the polls, as their voters immediately recognized that they'd been duped. The Left surge at the BSW's expense in the very late stage of this election campaign happened basically because the media and the pollsters effectively gave up on trying to astroturf the BSW after the AFD's poll numbers went back up to where they were before the BSW formed.
The gray column is the "Others." There are some regional ethnic parties mixed up in that, but also the Values Union, which is a group that was expelled from the CDU for being too based, but which might have been another last-ditch astroturfing effort to attract votes away from the AFD.
From right to left:
AFD: somewhat libertarian, socially conservative and anti-mass immigration. Also increasingly Euroskeptic. The only party worth voting for.
"Union" is the CDU/CSU. Basically European "center-right" pro-globalist, pro-mass immigration, pro-EU but might lower your taxes a bit. The CSU or Christian Social Union is the Bavarian regional version of the same national party, but tends to be a bit more conservative.
FDP are the Free Democrats: Neoliberal, pro-corporate, pro-free trade, open-borders and rabidly pro-EU. Socially also very liberal.
The SPD are your typical European Social Democrats, very pro-immigration, welfare-state-loving Eurocrats.
The Greens are the usual eco-commies.
The Left is basically a holdover from the GDR. Their main support base is still in the former East German states and they are unabashedly communist.
The BSW split off from the left, but still favors all the same commie policies, except that they also pretend to be Euroskeptic and anti-mass immigration. It seems pretty obvious at this point that the BSW was entirely astroturfed. More and more people in the industrial cities in East Germany were abandoning the Left party for the AFD, which the globalist establishment viewed as a much bigger threat, so they manufactured a schism in the Left party to try to siphon some of those working class votes from the AFD to the BSW, and there was a massive media manipulation campaign aimed at convincing people that the establishment were just as afraid of the BSW as they were of the AFD.
But then the BSW won seats in several state elections this past fall, and immediately ruled out governing with the AFD in favor of forming coalitions with the mainstream parties. That's what began their downward slide in the polls, as their voters immediately recognized that they'd been duped. The Left surge at the BSW's expense in the very late stage of this election campaign happened basically because the media and the pollsters effectively gave up on trying to astroturf the BSW after the AFD's poll numbers went back up to where they were before the BSW formed.
The gray column is the "Others." There are some regional ethnic parties mixed up in that, but also the Values Union, which is a group that was expelled from the CDU for being too based, but which might have been another last-ditch astroturfing effort to attract votes away from the AFD.