Summary
Germany’s conservative CDU/CSU, led by Friedrich Merz, won around 29% of the vote in the snap general election, making Merz the frontrunner to form a ruling coalition.
The far-right AfD surged to 20%, nearly doubling its 2021 result, but remains politically isolated as major parties refuse to cooperate with it.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats suffered their worst result since WWII, while his coalition partners, the Greens and FDP, also lost support.
Merz faces challenges forming a government, addressing economic woes, and countering the AfD’s growing influence.
Yes, those votes will not be represented in the parliament. It comes from the Weimar republic, which had a lot of small parties and was hard to govern as a result.
Not sure thrown away is the right word, a new party would never make it into parliament if people didn’t vote for them.