German election live: Centre-right CDU and CSU parties win, say exit polls Far-right Alternative for Germany records best result with close to 20 per cent of the vote

Inside Perspective here:

The former government colation (SPD, Greens, FDP) did not do a good enough job in the eyes of most germans. Mostly due to sabotage from the FDP who repeatedly blocked proposals and was the main reason for the breaking of the whole coaltition in the first place...

While the artivle claims that the CDU is expected to hold of against the AfD, the situation on the ground is different. Merz has just recently broken tabu by wanting to push an immigration restriction explicitly with votes from the AfD. So fears that the CDU is willing to form a government with them are substantiated by precedent.

This woule give them a majority, but could break the CDU internally. Not all of them like the AfD and Merz is barely human to begin with, especially unpopular with women for good reasons. Even a former chancellor, Angela Merkel, stepped in to explocitly criticise Merz for that move specifically.

Likely it will be CDU + SPD or CDU + SPD + Greens.

All of this is happening while a ban of the AfD is currently underway, but with this result that idea might become compromised.

Summary: Things turned out bad as expected, but as long as a CDU + AfD coalition is avoided, we still have a slim chance to not burn down the whole country.