Germany is preparing for a general election to the Bundestag, the lower house of its parliament, on 23 February, after its “traffic-light” coalition of social democrats, liberals and greens collapsed. The country’s electoral system is highly proportional, so polls give a good indication of what shape of government might be possible after the election.
Who’s who? Party profiles
Possible coalitions post-election
It is very unlikely that any party will have a majority in the Bundestag, so the parties and German voters will already be thinking about what coalitions might be possible. The two major centre-left and centre-right parties have served in Bundestag coalitions before, and coalitions featuring the Greens or FDP are not unusual. An important consideration is that a party’s share of seats in the Bundestag is usually slightly bigger than its share of votes overall, because parties which fail to cross a 5% national vote share – with some exceptions – don’t get seats, so the seats are distributed proportionally among the parties who do. These rough projections are therefore only a guide to what may be feasible.
The outgoing Bundestag
It’s clear from the makeup of the current chamber that Scholz’s government could not survive without the FDP, but would also have struggled to form any new coalition that did not include the conservative CDU/CSU. For their part, Friedrich Merz’s party had more to gain from new elections than from propping up the chancellor.
