Alice Weidel may get the last laugh yet.
The co-leader of Germany’s most popular party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), was visibly amused on Tuesday morning when Friedrich Merz, the head of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), lost the first vote for the Bundestag’s next chancellorship. Never before in German history had a presumptive chancellor been rejected in an initial ballot. But 18 members of Merz’s 328-member governing coalition had bolted and cast their secret votes against him. That betrayal left Merz six votes shy of the bare majority of Bundestag seats (316 out of 630) needed to assume the chancellorship. After a hastily convened second round, Merz pushed his total up to a sufficient 325 votes (with three holdouts, still anonymous), but the damage had been done.
