German election 2017 was basically US election 2016.
People were disaffected with the status quo.
The US had people like Trump and Sanders coming to the fore.
In Germany, the small parties gained at the expense of the big parties. All of them: from the far right to the far left.
Merkel has two options to form a government:
option 1:
"Black-Red"
Merkel's Conservatives and the Social-Democrats.
(Though it seems unlikely that the Social-Democrats will help Merkel out again: Playing junior-partner to her government has devastated their poll-numbers.)
option 2:
"Jamaica" (black, yellow, green)
Merkel's Conservatives, the Free Democrats (basically liberal capitalists) and the Greens.
(The Free Democrats and the Greens would be eager to join, because they would be able to push their own agenda into a government. However such a coalition would be unstable, because 3 parties would have to get along.)
The far-right AFD is the third-strongest party, leading to general disgust among the other parties.
However, the big question is why people voted for the AFD: Was the vote for the AFD simply a vote against the staus quo? Or did the voters honestly share their right-wing agenda?
= new reply since forum marked as read
The Free Democrats are not really into climate change issues (because the free market doesn't like wind and solar power unless they get "subsidies" ), while it's the core issue for the Greens. The Free Democrats also complain that Greens favour regulation and limitations way too much, while the Free Democrats love personal responsibility...
They are not really close friends, to say the least.
As a voter of the green party and former voter of the Free Democrats (my boyfriend favoured the Free Democrats again this time), I hope they can find some common ground. Otherwise we're out of options for a government.
Also, the fact that AfD got ~13% of the vote hurts. A lot. Their chancellor candidate Gauland already claimed that they will now start to chivvy ("jagen", let's hope they are not planing to hunt them like deer) Merkel's new government. Also, they want to "take back our country and our Volk" (we like to say "Bevölkerung" for populace instead of Volk because Hitler was very fond of his Volk).
