but I’m sure the good old Friedrich has a solid plan.

As we all know that Friedrich Merz has zero morals he obviously has a solid plan to get to power: He still has 2 years to parrot far-right propaganda even more while gradually forgetting his pretended resistence against a CxU-AfD coalition.

The best part is that they put the success of their party below their personal gain.. at least they don't mind becoming less popular it seems

Same here in Italy. We are ahead of the rest of Europe this time, due to having voted earlier last year. A word of warning: no matter how radical and extremist their claims are, once they take the seats in parliament they don't change anything. Here they came to the paradox of abrogating some laws of the previous government and reintroduce the very same measure with a different name. Only rhetorics will change (and not entirely for the good, unfortunately).

Europe really does not need a populist far-right resurgence right now.

What could possibly go wrong?

Democracy is not a state but an ever-ongoing process that involves everyone.

When the demands on society become too great, whether economic or transformative, it becomes difficult. Then the overburdened begin to follow the simpler/simplified narratives.

One could now argue that one could learn from history, but in an individualistic (or segregated) society, it is at least to some extent in the nature of the overburdened to not manage this. If these people are not helped in time, things will get turbulent. (And, in a bitter irony, often vote against their own long-term interests).

Thus, the greater the stress to which a society is exposed, the greater needs to be the solidarity of the "strong" with the "weak". Neoliberalism, however, pushes in the opposite direction.

Well it's still scary enough.

Code Black! https://clip.cafe/the-simpsons-movie-2007/no-more-dumping-in-the-lake-i-hereby-declare-a-state-of-emergency/

It's a mix. For well-off people that party makes sense. And of course there's still quite a few people who buy into the whole "the market will fix it" stuff.

The people voting for them firmly believing to totally become one of their rich clients soon™ (after whatever rediculous investment idea they heard on TikTok makes them rich...) weren't known for their working brain cells before, so why do you expect them to smarten up suddenly?

Shareholders

Me. AMA.

as if putting hundreds of thousands of people with low incomes and different cultures was not going to generate conflicts.

Except that the places in Germany that have the highest votes for that piece of shit AfD have the LOWEST amount of immigrants.

Most of the people voting for the AFD are just upset with the current political Partys

Maybe some, but several studies have shown, that a good deal of AfD voters are in fact completely on board with their fascist world view.
And those who are not still tolerate it.

Just blaming it all on dissatisfaction without addressing the deep seated bigotry in large parts of the population does not help the discussion and in imho only helps to further legitimize the AfD as a serious alternative.

but do they really have to give their protest vote to a party of bigots when there are better options available?

Their problem with current political parties seems to be that they don't address the "problem" that is the presence of brown people in germany "appropriately"