I watched the numbers from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania with an unusual sense of recognition. From Karachi, German state politics can sometimes look remote. Not this time. The Alternative für Deutschland had just finished first in another German state election. According to the preliminary result, it won 38.2 percent of the second votes in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. The governing Social Democrats finished close behind at 35.5 percent. Then came the number that caught my attention: 4.9 percent. That was the result for Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s CDU. On the preliminary result, the party failed to cross the five-percent threshold and will have no seats … Continue reading Germany Can Still Govern Around the AfD. But the Arithmetic Is Getting Harder