A ‘grand coalition’ or weeks of horse trading: What next for Germany?

The German elections ended in a dead heat, revealing that Germany itself is divided almost 50-50 between left and right. Mary Dejevsky looks at the various coalition options

A Scholz-led coalition could take Germany in a more socially progressive direction (AFP via Getty)

The moment that French polling stations close on presidential election night, the silhouette of the new president gradually constitutes itself on television screens across the country. When German polls close, a multicoloured graph appears, starting with the leading party on the left and moving across to the “other parties” on the right.

At 6pm German time this Sunday, the two left-hand columns were identical: the estimated share of the vote for the two main parties – the centre-right CDU-CSU partnership, the alliance of the outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel, and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) – stood at 25 per cent apiece. Between them, they had shared half the German vote, leaving the messy business of negotiating the country’s next coalition government even messier than forecast. Through the evening, Germany’s party leaders and political observers expressed the hope that there would be a new government in place – by Christmas.

As the hours passed, the distribution of the vote became more precise, along with the allocation of parliamentary seats. There was a narrow winner: the SPD, led by Olaf Scholz, deputy chancellor and finance minister in the outgoing government, had pulled ahead of the CDU-CSU, led by the CDU’s Armin Laschet, with 206 seats, compared to the centre-right’s 196. At the same time, though, the distribution of the vote clarified something else: neither of the main parties would be able to form the two-party coalition they had hoped for, except possibly with each other – as a new rendition of Merkel’s departing “grand coalition”.