Thread by @jonworth

Trying to make sense of what is happening in 🇩🇪 politics just now has been on my mind a lot recently.

Here is a thread about it...

...and it starts with someone pretty much all of my non-German followers will never have heard of:

YouTuber @rezomusik

The Guardian has a summary of the Rezo phenomenon here:
theguardian.com/world/2019/may…

tl;dr - it's a 55 minute rant about the shortcomings of the CDU-SPD grand coalition, and urging people to vote in #EP2019

Here's the full video:

12 million views so far!

And Rezo and 90 others followed up with this:

3.2 million views

It has caused all sorts of head scratching and counter proposals from within the CDU... culminating with this today from Merkel successor @AKK

Headline translation: "Reaction to Rezo: Kramp-Karrenbauer is considering regulating opinion"
maz-online.de/Nachrichten/Po…

🤯

In Germany we have grown accustomed to Merkel who never seems to ever say anything out of place...

But this is not the first mis-step from AKK - there was this in March too:
france24.com/en/20190304-me…

Also the CDU was hoping for a AKK bounce in this election and did not get one. They ran a lousy and boring campaign, and lost 6.4% in comparison to 2014.

It was not only the CDU that took a kicking. Despite actually putting more money and effort into the campaign than the CDU did, the SPD lost 11.5% and ended up on just 15.8% - 3rd place.

Listening to AKK (CDU) flanked by Weber (CSU/EPP) and Söder (CSU), and to Nahles flanked by Barley (SPD) on election night... the overwhelming impression was of two clapped out and tired old parties.

The stats on voting by age group ought to scare both too. Here is the full breakdown.

Source: spiegel.de/politik/auslan…

Among under 30s the satirical "Die Partei" came only 2 points short of the SPD!

So it was only #EP2019 you might say...

Well turnout was very solidly UP - to 59%, which is only 17% or so short of the level at the last Bundestagswahl

And who is picking up the discontented voters?

To a great extent the Greens are.

The Greens *topped* the poll in 9 of the 10 largest cities in Germany:

https://twitter.com/KathaSchulze/status/1132896044365373440

This is the political map of Berlin based on the #EP2019 results

Source: statistik-berlin-brandenburg.de/publikationen/…

This also builds on excellent results for the Greens in Länder elections last year - as summed up by @jonhenley here:
theguardian.com/world/2018/oct…

It is not a universally positive picture - the AfD is still doing very well in Brandenburg, Sachsen and Thüringen

Source: tagesschau.de/inland/deutsch…

That the SPD has been in the doldrums we have known for a while. But it looks like the future of the CDU now also has a big ❓ over it too. Can it return to being the people's party of the past?

And if either the SPD or CDU were brimming with ideas, or full of compelling characters then the future might look OK.

But neither are.

There is no special recipe to this from the Greens, no radical new path.

With @ABaerbock & Robert Habeck as leaders the party feels more at ease with itself than it did.

And with voters seeing climate change as the major #EP2019 issue it was as if the Greens' time had come.

There have been false dawns for the Greens in Germany in the past. And regional elections in Brandenburg and Sachsen are not going to be super for the party.

But it feels like something has really shifted here these past 6 months. We're only starting to understand it.

/ends