Germany's Merz falls short of majority in vote for chancellor

I still can't believe that we went from 16 years of stillstand under CDU to *finally* some progress under SPD-Grüne-FDP, just for it to be sabotaged by Merz with his stupid lawsuit, which then got FDP into their anal power play and somehow Lindner managed to make his solely Lindner focussed politics even more solely Lindner focussed, and then collectively decided yeah, that government didn't solve world hunger, injustice, climate change and international wars within 3 years, fuck them, let's go back to CDU.

And now Spahn, that fuckface, is Fraktionsvorsitzender. This means de facto he will be chancellor down the road. That AfD ballsucking fucktard. Watching the world burn for personal political gain. (Also looking at you, Amthor.)

Merz is bad for the working class and for Germany. Every day out of power is a good day for the world.

You'd think that if anyone knows how to do those votes correctly, it would be those guys.

The choice marked incorrectly or multiple choices marked.

How can there be an invalid vote? What does that mean?

If there is no winner in the second round, the candidate with the most votes wins.

If that is the absolute majority, all is fine.

If there is no absolute majority, the President has the option to appoint the candidate who got the most votes or dissolve the parlament and call for new elections.

I don't understand why they held a vote before they knew they had the numbers. Aren't there negotiations with the coalition partners to make sure everyone is in agreement with the government plans?

Okay that would be pretty smart.

I don't think so. Everyone knows he has the votes so he doesn't need the afd for this.

The AfD could obliterate trust in him by voting for him, though.

No one would believe he didn't make a deal with them, since he has leaned on them for a vote against the former government twice already, causing a huge scandal.

Absolutely not. The coalition has the votes. They will definitely not reach out to AfD. This would make no sense at all.

There will be another vote. After they realize what fools they made of themselves/decide they made their point everyone will vote to approve him.

Exactly as I said: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/06/friedrich-merz-suffers-shock-defeat-in-german-parliament-vote-for-chancellor

The parliament has 14 days to try and get a different (or the same) person elected with the total majority (>50% of votes). If they can not get a person elected with more than 50% of the votes during those 2 weeks they then can elect a person with a relative majority. Since Merz was only short a couple votes they will probably still elect him and this was just a demonstration of power from the SPD since they barely have the 50% in the parliament if both parties combine their votes.

They voted again, he is chancellor now

Worst possible outcome would be if in the 2nd vote he gets a majority that shows all of the far right AfD voted for him, too.

Especially since he already did a back room deal to get their support in a vote before.

No one would believe him when he says he didn’t make a deal with them.

Merz confirmed as new German chancellor. 325 votes in favour, more than 316 required. 289 against, one abstention, three invalid votes.

He get's two more rounds of voting, and will likely be elected in the third round. Otherwise the CDU/CSU will have to forward another candidate, since the election was for the party, not the candidate, they remain the strongest party and could propose anyone to be elected chancellor. But this might crash out the proposed coalition government if they think that the SPD cannot keep its promise to vote for him.

Technically, there's a two-week period during which he or others can try to be elected by absolute majority (316 of 630 votes). After that, the requirements would be lowered to simple majority.

So Merz may still be elected in a second vote. If he fails again, we will likely see a snap election, with the extremist right AfD gaining even more.

A big danger about a second vote could be the AfD voting for Merz for troll reasons. They've done this kind of thing before in the state parliament of Thuringia. If Merz got, say, 461 votes in a second vote, it would be obvious that he got the majority not from SPD + Union but by the votes of the AfD. This would trigger massive debates about whether the coalition partners should go ahead with government formation or not.

Another possibility is that of a different coalition forming, either Union + SPD + Greens (so including the Greens in the current planned coalition), or Union + AfD. While I could see the former happening in some scenarios (though probably with a different candidate from the Union), I think the latter will not occur at this point in time, as too many Union members and voters are still strictly opposed to cooperating with the AfD. (But I think it is a realistic scenario in future elections.)

I'm not that deeply into German politics, but I would guess: the CDU/CSU compromise with their "values" and start proposing positions in the next government to the AfD, so they can get votes from them.

So ... what happens next?

It was most likely a signal from his own party that they do not 100% support him - he's just the only option there is right now.

>Two and a half months, they weren't joking about slow German bureaucracy 😱

Bureaucracy has nothing to do with it.

The world just keeps getting worse.