Deciphering Germany’s Election Results: New at Reason

Germany’s Angela Merkel will likely have to form a coalition with a free-market party and an environmentalist one.

Marian Tupy writes:

What are we to make of the results of the German election? On the face of it, Germans have opted for a safe pair of hands. Angela Merkel, who first became Chancellor in 2005, and her party, the center-right Christian Democrats, have won 33 percent of the vote and 246 seats in the Bundestag. Since there are 630 seats in the federal parliament, Merkel’s CDU/CSU will need to form a coalition with one or more parties to form government.

Over the last four years, she has governed with the center-left Social Democrats (SPD gained 20.5 percent of the vote and 153 seats). That arrangement is unlikely to continue because, in order to undermine the SPD, Merkel’s milquetoast Christian Democrats have moved to the left. As such, the SPD base feels that the party needs to go into opposition to find its independent voice again.

A coalition with the leftist Die Linke (9.2 percent and 69 seats) is out of the question and the same goes for a coalition with the rightist Alternative for Deutschland (AfD), which gained 13.3 percent of the vote and 94 seats in the Bundestag.

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