Merz Wins: Germans Save the World

The First Glimmer of Hope After Weeks of Darkness

Today’s German national election was a pivotal event for the world, especially in the wake of the American electorate’s verdict in November 2024. While it will take at least another day to determine the exact seat distribution in the Bundestag, one outcome is already clear: Friedrich Merz and the CDU have won the German election.

In 2021, when the SPD, led by Olaf Scholz, came to power, the Bundestag had 735 seats, with the SPD securing 206 of them. In 2023, Germany passed an electoral reform law to curb the Bundestag’s bloated size, capping it at 630 seats. As seen in the results above, the CDU is currently leading with 209 seats — a far stronger performance than what the SPD managed in 2021.

Now, imagine an alternate scenario — one where the AfD, the party openly boosted by Elon Musk and J.D. Vance in the final stretch of the campaign, had won a majority. The fight to hold the democratic world together would have teetered on the edge.

An AfD victory would have set off a geopolitical chain reaction: Trump hands Putin a ceasefire deal, giving Russia a critical…