The stalemate election: can Germany move beyond Merkel?

Germany’s election campaign has taken many unexpected turns. In January, Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), were leading by about 20 percentage points. By April, the Greens were ahead. By July, the CDU/CSU had bounced back, and then all of a sudden, the Social Democrats (SPD) came out of nowhere to a solid lead by last weekend. The gap has since closed a little ahead of Sunday’s election — and the joyride is still not over.

What is also different about these elections is that, based on current polling, four, five or even six coalitions might be arithmetically possible. So the real battle will likely start only after the election. One plausible scenario to watch out for is a majority for the three parties of the left — the SPD, the Greens and the Left party, the successor of the former East German Communist party, in which case, Olaf Scholz, German finance minister and the SPD’s candidate, will have a good chance of succeeding Angela Merkel as the next German chancellor.