Shortly after the polls closed in Germany, Jeff Rathke, Eric Langenbacher, and Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger discussed the results of the snap elections. They give their reactions to the performance of the parties and what motivated such a high turnout. They also predict how the results will impact the coalition formation in the coming months and Germany’s international role in the coming years.HostJeff Rathke, President, AGIGuestsKlaus-Dieter Frankenberger, AGI Non-Resident Senior FellowEric Langenbacher, AGI Senior Fellow; Director, Society, Culture & Politics ProgramTranscriptJeff RathkeWelcome, all listeners, to this election edition of The Zeitgeist. We are speaking on Sunday, February 23, 2025, and I’ll even give the time we are speaking, because results are still coming in. It is Eric LangenbacherHello, greetings from Berlin.Jeff RathkeAnd Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger, who is a non-resident senior fellow at AGI, who is with us from Darmstadt, am I not right?Klaus-Dieter FrankenbergerYou are right.Jeff RathkeAnd he was for decades the foreign editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Welcome, Klaus.Klaus-Dieter FrankenbergerThank you. How are you?Jeff RathkeWell, very excited to hear what results we’ve got. This is an election campaign that over the last few weeks has taken on some remarkable circumstances or characteristics. First of all, this was an early election—doesn’t happen so often in Germany—but after the coalition of Olaf Scholz collapsed, the day after the U.S. presidential election on November 6, we’ve been headed for an early election.And this election campaign has taken place under the shadow of two particular developments. The first has been a series of attacks that have left several people dead. There have been three major attacks in the last three months, one in Magdeburg in December, it was a car driven into a Christmas market, which killed six people and left 300 people wounded. In the Bavarian town of Aschaffenburg in January of this year, there was a knife attack which left two people dead, one child and one adult, and in Munich just over a week ago a car was driven into a pro-union demonstration, leaving two people dead and 39 people injured. These were all attacks, which were carried out by migrants to Germany, in some cases, people who had failed asylum claims and who were supposed to leave the country, and so there was this upswell of focus on the fact that Germany is still struggling with migration many years after the big years of arrivals.The second is more of a geopolitical development. The campaign has been taking place as the Trump administration takes office and rolls out its policies. Here, we see an abrupt change in the U.S. policy toward the war in Ukraine, where the United States is now pushing for a rapid settlement of the war and has moved away, I think it’s fair to say, from the really staunch support of Ukraine. This leaves Europeans unsettled. There is also the parallel question about the United States’ commitment to the security of Europe and in particular through NATO. This external uncertainty and internal turmoil have characterized this election. With that, Eric, what do we see in the numbers that have come out so far?