That is certainly not how the Greens imagined it.

A week before the general election, they have to fight a downward battle, not an upward one in the direction of the Chancellery.

The gap to the Union in the polls is significantly greater than that to the FDP.

The Triell architecture, which was laid down months ago, is now pretending to be wrong.

The Greens will be able to significantly improve their 2017 election result (8.9 percent).

But they have set themselves completely different standards that they will not be able to keep.

Baerbock has long served as a junior partner for the SPD candidate Scholz.

Anyone who hoped for the Greens will be disappointed.

The party is threatened with further corrections in the state elections in the next few years, possibly even a pass-through downwards.

The best argument for a traffic light

The eyes are mainly on the FDP.

It is pulled from all sides.

But if she's smart, she'll keep the concrete shoes on and won't move until election day.

It wants to govern, but it must not be too cheap.

Some EU voters who are close to the economy may now turn to the FDP in order to prevent "worse" from happening if the Union continues to weaken - which, of course, allows the Union to decline further.

Such a strengthened FDP - that would be the stair joke - would then possibly become part of a traffic light coalition. It is true that the Free Democrats always say that with them there will be no slide to the left in Germany. But it is precisely this promise that could be the loudest argument for an alliance with the SPD and the Greens.

Both in a Jamaica coalition and in a traffic light coalition, the “big little ones” FDP and the Greens, who are at opposite ends in terms of content on many issues, would have to work together. A traffic light coalition would be particularly shaky. Rhineland-Palatinate, which has been ruled by such an alliance for years, does not serve as a model. As Prime Minister, Malu Dreyer has an SPD behind her that fully follows her. It's different with Scholz. The party left wants victory, many Jusos move into the Bundestag. They are all still pursuing one goal. But how long?