🇩🇪 In Germany, the mainstream is panicking after these elections.

Thorsten Frei, leader of the CDU/CSU group in the Bundestag, called the result a turning point for Germany and said conservatives must ask why they are no longer reaching voters.

CDU Secretary-General Franziska Hoppermann rejected any debate over Chancellor Merz's future and again ruled out cooperation with either the AfD or The Left.

Social Democratic Party co-leader Lars Klingbeil called the vote a signal to Berlin and said the result should prompt the federal government to reflect on its policies.

Co-leader Bärbel Bas said the result is frightening many people, while Green co-chair Felix Banaszak described the AfD surge as dramatic.

The Left's Heidi Reichinnek branded the result catastrophic, blaming federal government policies for creating fertile ground for the far right.

But the CDU's refusal to cooperate with The Left makes constructing an anti-AfD majority harder.

BSW founder Sahra Wagenknecht declared the cordon sanitaire policy a failure in a post on X, warning another coalition built purely to exclude the AfD would be an affront to voters.

The AfD, meanwhile, claimed a mandate to govern. Co-leader Alice Weidel hailed a historic result, while fellow co-leader Tino Chrupalla declared that Ulrich Siegmund will be our new minister-president, referring to the party's lead candidate in Saxony-Anhalt.

Chrupalla then turned Merz's own rhetoric back on him, recalling the chancellor's promise that his government would be so good it would cut the AfD in half, and said the AfD had cut the CDU in half.