Five things we learned from the EU election

Photo by Joshua Fuller on Unsplash

Dear Reader,

A lot of the coverage of the EU elections in the English-language media has acted as if Europe’s lurch to the right came as a shock.

In truth, in Germany at least, everything played out as expected. Polling carried out in the run up proved to be very accurate.

Nonetheless, seeing the unpopularity of the current government in polling is one thing; having it confirmed at the ballot box is quite another.

In the final count, the governing parties of the Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrats got a combined 31 percent. That’s not just a spectacular 20-point drop on their joint vote at the last federal election, it’s barely more than what the Christian Democrats managed alone.

The big winners of the night of course weren’t the CDU, for whom 30 percent shouldn’t count as a success.

Winners were the far-right AfD, who came second with 16 percent, and Sahra Wagenknecht’s BSW, who won six percent despite being founded less than six months ago.

East Germany remains a riddle

Perhaps you have seen it already. But it is so startling that it bears mentioning again. 

Anyone who wants to know where the border fell that divided Germany for over four decades in the latter half of the 20th century doesn’t need to look in a history book (or on Wikipedia). They just need to look at a map of how the 400 constituencies in the country voted on Sunday.