There is some movement in the German political party landscape.
Earlier this year Sarah Wagenknecht of the Linke (far-left) left the party to found her own party. Now I just read that Hans-Georg Maaßen, who is still in the CDU (center-right) but in the process of being kicked out of the party for being too friendly with the AfD and generally too far on the right for them also wants to start his own party.
In that case we would move from a 6 party system (far-left. Greens, center-left, pro-business-libertarians, center-right, far-right) to an 8 party system (populist left, far-left, Greens, center-left, pro-business-libertarians, center-right, whatever-in-between-thing-Maaßen-will-start, far-right).
It has been said that the new populist left party (Wagenknecht) might attract some people from the populist right (AfD) as they have the same target audience. It would be interesting to see what effects another option on the menu between CDU and AfD would have. They already have something similar in Bavaria - the Bündnis Freie Wähler, a sort of more accetable populist right between the CSU and the AfD which was gaining votes during the last Bavarian election despite (or maybe even because of) their party head being involved in a bit of a scandal about a nasty pamphlet he once wrote as a schoolboy. They are rightwing but, unlike the AfD, not anti-system. I also wonder how this would affect the course of the CDU which Merz has recently steared further to the right because he does have several competitors who would like to take over party leadership and possibly manage it differently (Wüst and Günther come to mind)
tl;dr: Both the far-left and the far-right are splintering which might not be really be a sign of weakness but rather of differenciation because so many people are looking for options outside the center but want more than one option.
