Certainly there’s a lot of strategic voting going on. But you don’t see the Liberal (centrist) seat count increasing as the NDP goes down: the gains are all with the Conservatives. If it were a matter of progressives deciding to just consolidate with Liberals, you’d expect to see the Liberal seat count go up as the smaller parties went down. To me this suggests either that some people are flipping directly from left to right or that there is a general rightwards drift, with right-wing Liberals going over to Conservatives and left-wing strategic voters filling in some of the gap they leave for the Liberals. In either case it’s concerning that when the Conservatives fielded their most far-right leader so far, their share of the seats went up.
In either case it’s concerning that when the Conservatives fielded their most far-right leader so far, their share of the seats went up.
It’s not surprising at all, the 2 conservative parties in Germany are the most far-right and second most far-right parties. They host politicians who are grandsons and granddaughters of real Nazi SS officers (like the leader of the AfD: Alice Weidel, her grandpa was directly responsible for thousands of civilian deaths as military judge and prosecuter and later chief military judge for Adolf fucking Hitler. They copy their talking points one to one and would love to see people dissappear, who are not looking like them. Conservatives, for the most part, are atrociously far-right.
There’s strategic voting going both ways as some people are simply tired of seeing the Liberals in power, they would have been back the following election if the cons had won.
Certainly there’s a lot of strategic voting going on. But you don’t see the Liberal (centrist) seat count increasing as the NDP goes down: the gains are all with the Conservatives. If it were a matter of progressives deciding to just consolidate with Liberals, you’d expect to see the Liberal seat count go up as the smaller parties went down. To me this suggests either that some people are flipping directly from left to right or that there is a general rightwards drift, with right-wing Liberals going over to Conservatives and left-wing strategic voters filling in some of the gap they leave for the Liberals. In either case it’s concerning that when the Conservatives fielded their most far-right leader so far, their share of the seats went up.
It’s not surprising at all, the 2 conservative parties in Germany are the most far-right and second most far-right parties. They host politicians who are grandsons and granddaughters of real Nazi SS officers (like the leader of the AfD: Alice Weidel, her grandpa was directly responsible for thousands of civilian deaths as military judge and prosecuter and later chief military judge for Adolf fucking Hitler. They copy their talking points one to one and would love to see people dissappear, who are not looking like them. Conservatives, for the most part, are atrociously far-right.
There’s strategic voting going both ways as some people are simply tired of seeing the Liberals in power, they would have been back the following election if the cons had won.