2021 German parliamentary election

 2021 German parliamentary election (Election)

The makeup of the new Bundestag
Date	26 September 2021
Description	Possibly the most important German election in decades.

The 2021 German parliamentary election took place on Sunday 26 September 2021 to elect the members of the 20th Bundestag, while State elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern were also held. Angela Merkel chose not to run again for election but remains Chancellor of Germany until a successor takes office.

Germany is set for weeks or even months of protracted coalition talks after the race to succeed Angela Merkel failed to produce a clear winner, with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) just 10 seats ahead of the centre-right conservative alliance CDU/CSU, which failed to finish top for the first time in 16 years.

The election’s true winners may turn out to be third-placed Alliance 90/The Greens and the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) in 4th place, which will likely serve as the junior partners in either a “traffic light” (SPD-Greens-FDP) or “Jamaica” (CDU-Greens-FDP) coalition. Referring to the lack of common ground between the parties on Monday 27 September 2021, Greens chancellor candidate Annalena Baerbock joked:

“I assume we all love to eat ice cream.”

Timeline

On 11 August 2021, the parties launched their election campaigns.

On 3 September 2021, The Guardian reported that the contest is too close to call.

Campaign issues

The main issue appears to be Climate change. After huge deadly floods in Germany, voters are urging for climate action. Euronews published six stories to outline the issues in the election.

Other issues include:

• COVID-19 response in Germany
• Corruption
• Jobs
• Open borders

Controversies

• Widespread use of postal voting, leading to some claims of potential fraud, claims which were duly banned by social media corporations.
• Youtube will censor anyone spreading "false claims that widespread fraud, errors, or glitches changed the outcome' of this election.
• Two lists were rejected; Greens in Saarland and the AFD in Bremen
• The election day in Berlin was dominated by chaos, with long queues in front of polling stations and wrong or too few ballot papers.

Candidates for Chancellor

• Annalena Baerbock
• Armin Laschet
• Olaf Scholz

Parties

• CDU, the biggest bloc since 2005
• SPD, leading the polls in the runup
• FDP, quite interesting, COVID sceptical
• Alliance 90/The Greens, the party to watch, came in 6th place in 2017. The Greens took more big donations than the CDU.
• AFD, the largest party outside the coalition, expected to win fewer seats than in 2017
• Die Linke, new leadership in 2021, polls predict a poor showing, just above 5%, the vote share necessary to win seats

Polls

Opinion polls have fluctuated over the course of the campaign. Social media companies like Facebook banned dieBasis, a protest party against

Election day

Armin Laschet suffered an embarrassing blunder when casting his vote.

Bundestag election, House of Representatives election, BVV election, expropriation referendum and Berlin marathon in one day: It has been known for several months that election Sunday will be a day of superlatives. Still, it seems like the capital wasn't prepared for it.

Results

The new SPD parliamentarians lined up for a photo shoot. Only one of them wore a face mask (COVID prophet of doom Karl Lauterbach). At the same time school children in the country are forced to wear them all day.

Olaf Scholz and his SPD has won the most seats. The worst results for the CDU since WW2.

Analysis

Bad for Russian-Western relations.

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Why Angela Merkel has lasted so long	Article	30 July 2021	Wolfgang Streeck	2 months before the September 2021 elections in which Angela Merkel will retire as Chancellor, a German economic sociologist writes as to why and how she has been able to hold onto power in Germany for so long after an unprecedented 16 years in power.
Document:Would-be German chancellor Scholz jumps the gun on EU expansion eastward, which may provoke more states to follow the UK and exit	Article	15 August 2021	Paul Nuttall	Olaf Scholz is a possible candidate for Chancellor of Germany at the September 2021 German parliamentary election. He has warned Russia to expect further European integration and expansion into Eastern Europe. Will this encourage more countries to follow the UK and leave the European Union?

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