View: German elections tinged with uncertainty | Economic Times

It is election-time in Germany. The Germans are used to placid, stable, middle-class existence, which has incrementally seen an improvement in their lives over the 16 years that Chancellor Angela Merkel has led Germany since 2005.The election on September 26 comes when Merkel has decided not to seek reelection. In the last few months, Germany has seen several crises, which diminished confidence in governance. Covid handling seemed to remain in crisis mode for over a year. The flooding in parts of Germany, which led to unprecedented scenes in some of their small towns, showed a lack of appropriate responses. And there is no steady Merkel as a candidate anymore. The big question of this election, therefore, is will Germany vote for change, or will they vote for more of the same?Since 2015 and the refugee influx, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its ally, the Christian Socialist Union (CSU) of Bavaria, have decreased their vote share. In 2017, with 32% of the vote, it was the steepest drop since WWII. Yet, in 2017, the CDU was the largest party, and therefore still led the coalition. Now its vote share has dropped to about 22% as of September 23, 2021. For most of the year, the CDU remained at 36%, dipping to 24% in May, rising briefly to 29% in July. Since then, it has consistently come down to about 22%.The sharp 10% fall in CDU vote is a cause of concern to the centrist party's leadership. Most of this has gone to its alliance partner, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which had a low 18% vote share in January. It rapidly increased since August, reaching 25% in September. CDU has lost about 10% over the year. The SPD has gained. Smaller parties like the Free Democrats (FDP), the AfD, and the Left are broadly consistent at 11%, 12% and 6%. The other change which has come this year is in the fate of the Greens. Starting this year with an 18% vote share, they reached a high of 25% overtaking the CDU for the first time in May. This led the Greens to nominate their own Chancellor candidate, Annalena Baerbock, but after that they have had a dip in fortunes continuously coming down to about 16% now. In 2017 the Greens had only 8.9%. Running in third place, they could surely be in any emerging coalition.The German parliament has 598 seats which are partly directly elected and partly proportional. They have a complex balance of proportional seats which are awarded to parties, leading to a flexible number, The Bundestag of 2017 had 709 seats.However, if a party gets a coalition of about 300 seats or so, it can run a government. Keeping in view the poll of polls for the current elections, the SPD should be in the pole position with 25%. If it ties up with the Greens and the FDP, it could have a majority. The CDU with 22% will not be able to have a majority with the same coalition.An SPD-led three party coalition, including the Greens and the FDP seems likely. The record of the last four elections shows that such coalitions are difficult to organize, because the smaller parties have large ambitions. This can be avoided if the SPD has a further spurt in their vote share, which has not happened over the last week before elections. If they cross 30% vote share, then they could dictate terms to their junior partners.Everybody seeks a change but the candidates are trying to show how akin to Merkel they are! The CDU candidate Armin Laschet, is seen as a Merkelianer, but without the confidence generating abilities so far. He has not been able to rally the whole party behind him. Many in the party still believe that he is not the best candidate to be their Chancellor.The dignified Olaf Scholz, the Vice Chancellor and finance minister who is the SPD candidate for chancellorship, has kept out of trouble. His two rivals from the CDU and the Greens have controversy surrounding them during the campaign. This allowed Scholz to be the leader among all three, and slowly pulled up the rating of his party as well. The reason for this is that he is seen as a Merkelianer! Once the results are out, a Merkelianer is likely to be the winner, whether it is the SPD leader or the CDU leader. Poll projections do not give a clear majority to any one party or a perceived coalition. When no lead party has over 30% of the vote, it becomes more difficult to cajole allies. Therefore, it is likely that after September 26, there will be long drawn-out negotiations for the next government. And though Merkel's term would have ended, she would remain the Chancellor for a while longer.(Gurjit Singh former Ambassador to Germany, Indonesia, Ethiopia ASEAN and the African Union. Current Chair, CII Task Force on Trilateral Cooperation in Africa & Professor, IIT Indore)