Sunday is the last day on which a good 60 million eligible voters, slightly more women than men, can cast their votes to elect the 20th German Bundestag.

A few months later, the latter will decide who will become Federal Chancellor.

Eckart Lohse

Head of the parliamentary editorial office in Berlin.

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It's an unusual choice. Because on Sunday the “risk” ends after three years. That is how the outgoing Prime Minister Angela Merkel called her plan in October 2018 to be Chancellor for three years, but not CDU chairwoman. The decision has changed the mechanisms in the two parties previously competing for the Chancellery in such a way that it can have a decisive influence on the outcome of the election. In all the elections that Merkel won, she and her party had previously been able to watch how the Social Democrats dismantled their candidate for chancellor, who was even the chancellor the first time, on the way to the election.

In Merkel's last legislative period, however, it was the CDU and CSU that fell out.

So much so that the SPD, almost insignificant, rallied behind the unpopular Chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz, who was unpopular on the left, and even left the Union behind in the summer polls.

Scholz did everything to ensure that, as Merkel's Vice Chancellor, he got at least a small official bonus, while Union candidate Armin Laschet struggled to be both Merkel's heir and man of renewal.

The third member of the candidate association, the Greens chairwoman Annalena Baerbock, no longer plays a role after a flash in the pan in the polls in the race for the Chancellery.

Multiple coalitions possible

It looks like many coalitions are arithmetically possible after election day. There are probably two main variants: a so-called traffic light coalition of the SPD, Greens and FDP under the leadership of a Social Democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz and a “Jamaica” alliance of the Union, Greens and FDP with Chancellor Armin Laschet. It is unlikely that it will be enough for a government with only two partners (CDU and CSU counted as one party). According to surveys, not even the SPD and the Union would have enough votes for this. In addition, they are not striving for this alliance after three major coalitions under Merkel. For a red-green coalition preferred by Scholz, it is in all probability just as insufficient as for a black-yellow coalition with the FDP that Laschet is aiming for.

The Left Party wants to co-govern, Scholz has not yet ruled out a red-green-red alliance, but is building hurdles in terms of content.

No other party wants to form an alliance with the AfD.

The constitution does not contain any regulation that stipulates that only the first place has the right to form a coalition and to appoint the chancellor.

There are voices in the Union as well as in the SPD who say that they will also try from second place.

That already existed in the history of the Federal Republic.

The prevailing practice, however, was for the party that performed the most to provide the chancellor.