I think germany could have gone worse, and people are quick to see that the AfD has the second most votes and cry disaster, but reality is that left wing votes are just split between more parties. Overall “cdu and further right” seems to bd about evenly split with “left of cdu”.

But still, compared to both the previous EU election and the most recent national election, it got quite a bit worse. CDU and AfD combined were at 36% in the last national election, they’re up by about 5% each, and that while the CDU has been getting closer to the AfDs position in recent years.