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September 26, 2021 - Germany goes to vote in federal elections. Seats open from 8 this morning to 18, with 60.4 million eligible voters called to vote to renew the Bundestag through two votes, one - with a single-member method for the election of 299 parliamentarians, the other - according to a proportional system with a threshold - to choose a political party among the 47 lists in the running, few of which are destined to exceed the 5% threshold required to enter parliament.
The vote, which marks the end of the 'Merkel era', the chancellor at the helm of governments in Berlin for the last 16 years, was preceded by months of fluctuating polls, which alternately rewarded the Greens, then the SPD, resulting in an abrupt a decline in the consensus for the Union (CDU / CSU), then suddenly returned to rise in the last few days. It will be a battle at the last vote and, above all, the undecided will be decisive.
On paper there are six possible government coalitions, from a re-edition of the Great Coalition CDU-CSU-SPD possibly extended to the Greens (Kenya coalition) to the Jamaica coalition (Union-Fdp-Greens) to a Germany coalition (Union-Spd-Fdp) to the red-red-green government team (SPD-Die Linke-Verdi) to a traffic light coalition (Verdi, Fdp, Spd). Much will depend on the results of the two leading parties in the polls, on which of the two will prevail and with what gap over the other. The choice of the chancellor is also linked to this.
Three candidates vying for the chancellery: the Christian Democrat Armin Laschet, president of the CDU and premier of North Rhine Westphalia, who runs for the Union (CDU / CSU), the former mayor of Hamburg and current Federal Minister of Finance, Olaf Scholz, candidate of the Social Democrats, Annalena Baerbock, candidate of the Greens.
The latest polls see the two main parties separated by a few percentage points, and their respective leaders, the Social Democrat Olaf Scholz and the Christian Democrat Armin Laschet, engaged in a head-to-head, with a slight advantage for the former.
For the first time in sixteen years, Angela Merkel will therefore not be on the field, leaving her post as chancellor as one of the longest-serving leaders and as a 'heavyweight' in global politics, with a legacy marked by a series of crises and challenges. . "The stability of the country is at stake", he summed up yesterday in Aachen where he wanted to give the final sprint to the conservative union which, in the polls, still appears in pursuit of Olaf Scholz's social democrats. "Who governs is not the same", the chancellor said, while the tax increases, which she said will be imposed by a hypothetical government led by the SPD, "threaten to strangle the recovery".
"Every vote counts, your vote counts. This is why I ask you: go and vote", is the appeal of the President of the Republic Frank-Walter Steinemeier, in a speech in Bild am Sonntag. The president has just gone to his seat in Berlin to vote. "Whoever votes participates, whoever does not vote lets others decide", added the head of state on the tabloid.
Turnout and voting by post
Voter turnout has traditionally been very high in the country (even more than 90%) until the late 1980s. After reunification, the turnout has dropped to 70.9 in 2009 and 76.2 in 2017. Many voters will be voting by post this year.
The vote was introduced in 1957 but until 2008 those who wanted to use this method had to ask for permission and provide an explanation that justified their choice. Since 2009, this obligation no longer exists. The percentage of voters who resort to this solution has risen from less than 5% to 28.6 in the last federal elections and - also due to Covid - the percentage of voters by post is expected to grow significantly. Postal voting has been possible for several weeks, but the ballots must arrive within the closing time of the polling stations on election day. All votes must be counted by Monday morning
when the results are known
Who wins and who loses should be clear within hours of polls closing, but it could take weeks or months to know the name of the new chancellor. The outgoing coalition, composed of Merkel's conservative bloc and the SPD social democrats, holds the record of time taken to form a government (following the failed attempt to form another alliance, i.e. a Jamaican coalition between the CDU, the Greens and the FDP) : the elections were held on 24 September 2017 and the Bundestag elected Merkel for her fourth term as chancellor on 14 March 2018.
It will be necessary to form a governing coalition: usually, a detailed coalition agreement comes out of the negotiations, which needs to be approved by the parties that are part of it. Once a coalition is ready, the German president appoints a candidate for the chancellery, who needs to get a majority in the Bundestag to take office. The old government remains in office until the new one is ready. If two attempts to elect a chancellor by majority fail, the Constitution allows the president to nominate the candidate who obtained the most votes in the third ballot or to dissolve the Bundestag to go to new elections: this has never happened so far.
The vote in Berlin
In Berlin, voters will be called upon to make various electoral choices. Not only will they contribute to the renewal of the Bundestag, but they will elect the Abgeordnete Haus, the single-chamber legislative assembly of the German city-state, which is elected every five years, and therefore they will compete to choose the new mayor, they will renew the twelve Bezirksverordnetenversammlungen (district assemblies), and they will rule on a controversial referendum to decide whether the city can expropriate the properties of companies that own more than 3,000 apartments each. Even those entitled to vote in the German Land of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern will have to cast more than one vote: in addition to the Bundestag, they are in fact called to rule on the regional parliament. The local Spd of Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig starts atappointment with a clear advantage, and could set a record, exceeding 40.6% in 2002.