Germany has long been a country where the protection of nature has a high value. From the 70s anti-atomic movement the Party Die Grünen (literally The Greens) was born. For a long time they have been in a up and down, but generally about 10% in German-wide votes, less in the eastern parts and a bit more in EU elections.
But in today's EU elections the German Greens managed for the first time in history to get the second most votes. This was helped by a drastic loss for the two big parties, CDU and SPD.
This is how drastic the change is:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7gdso-WsAA5Sxr.jpg:large
How did this happen?
There are are of course several reasons, especially for the losses of the two big, (until now) leading parties. But the most deciding trend was the topic of climate change.
In the last weeks #FridaysforFuture has been the dominating topic, and not only here did the other parties, especially the right CDU, fail in their PR work. This is an undeniable generation conflict, and the deciding influence of it can be shown by this graphic:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7gfAx6WsAIMIKW.jpg:large age, % of votes, compared to last EU elections
The Greens have the most votes for people under 60 years old, and for the youngest voter groups, they dominate the field by far.
The exact opposite can be shown for the biggest party, CDU:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7gfB78W4AEEu2K.jpg:large
The young voters have stand up (61% of eligible people votes, the highest since the exiostance of a united Germany, compared to 48% at the last election) and showed that FUCK YES! climate change is the most important topic for us and you old geezers are still ignoring it or playing it down!
