Germany's elections: should we freak out or not?

The Europeans | European news, politics and culture

Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer

Society & Culture, News

4.8 • 274 Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2025

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Germany just staged one of Europe's most crucial elections this year. The results are simultaneously shocking and not-shocking: shocking because the far-right made huge gains; not shocking because they are likely to deliver a coalition between the country's two legacy mainstream parties. So, to what extent should we be freaking out right now? In this election special, we ring up Germanysplainer extraordinaire Tarik Abou-Chadi to unpack that question. Plus, we speak to the writer and activist Emilia Roig about what it feels like to be a long-term immigrant in Germany right now — and how to think about the fightback. Tarik is a professor of European politics at the University of Oxford. You can follow him on Bluesky here. You can find out more about Emilia's work here and follow her on Instagram here. Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcasts, we'd love it if you'd consider supporting our work in 2025. You can chip in to help us cover the weekly research and production of The Europeans at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠patreon.com/europeanspodcast⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (many currencies are available), or gift a donation to a super fan here. Producers: Morgan Childs and Wojciech Oleksiak Mixing and mastering: Wojciech Oleksiak Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina 03:50 Tarik Abou-Chadi untangles the German election results for us27:34 Emilia Roig on how to think about the fight against the far-right YouTube | Bluesky | Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | Mastodon⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | [email protected]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Goodnachter, Dominic.
0:07.0	Goodn't, Dominic.
0:24.6	Gooden tag.
0:25.6	Welcome to these special.
0:28.6	Oh, your German's not great.
0:30.6	I'm not sure we should try this in German.
0:33.6	Very rude.
0:34.6	I mean, you're quite right.
0:35.6	My German is not so good. So we won't do the whole episode in German. But we are going to be talking about Germany for this entire episode. Because you probably notice, listeners, there's been a pretty big election this past week.
0:48.9	Yeah, and one of the most closely watched elections for Europe this year, I imagine.
0:55.0	And it's an election that felt incredibly important for Germans themselves,
0:59.0	which you can tell by the fact that the turnout was massive.
1:03.0	83.5% record for Germany since unification.
1:07.0	So this election was a big deal, but at the same time, we've been struggling over the past few days to figure out exactly what to make of the results.
1:16.3	What was your first reaction, Katie, when the exit polls dropped on Sunday evening?
1:21.4	I mean, honestly, I was just kind of like, oh, because, you know, the results were both shocking and not shocking at the same time.
1:29.9	Like, not shocking in the sense that, to be honest, the results were pretty much what the
1:34.6	pollsters had predicted.
1:36.0	For once.
1:36.8	For once. Good job pollsters.
1:38.9	But they were also shocking at the same time in that the far right party, the AFD, came second with double the share
1:46.8	of the vote that they got in the last federal elections three years ago. Right. Yeah, it's difficult
	...

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