Incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz suffered an embarrassing setback when he fell short of a majority in an initial vote in the lower house of parliament, potentially delaying his swearing-in as head of government due to take place later on Tuesday.
See the Thuringen government crisis, where AfD, CDU and FDP voted together to topple the former state minister president in favor of a guy from the FDP that only made it into parliament by a dozen votes.
It has precedent that the AfD will vote to enable an unpopular candidate in order to mock the representative democracy.
Fair point. An unpopular FDP politician is probably a lot easer to control than a Merz though. This was definitely a calculated move. Especially since the AfD is very strong in Thuringia anyway. They are a lot weaker in der Bundestag still so they will likely oppose any candidate the CDU brings forward right now.