Election update: Grand Coalition?

According to the exit polls (as of 6 pm), Angela Merkel has handily won the plurality, but, as expected in their multiparty system, not the majority of votes.

According to the two major exit polls (ARD/ZDF), the results are:

CDU/CSU: 42%/42.3%
SPD:  26%/26.3%
Greens:  8.1%/8%
Left (Linke):  8.5%/8.5%
Liberals (FDP):  4.7%/4.5%
AfD (Euroskeptics):  4.9%/4.8%
Pirates:  2.3%

Any party with less than 5% of the vote is out of parliament entirely, and the remainder of the votes are distributed proportionately, which means that, if these results hold, their traditional junior coalition partner, the Liberals (who are not “liberal” in the American sense, but more like the libertarians, with an emphasis on right-of-center pro-business policies), will be knocked out of parliament and Merkel’s Christian Democrats will be forced into a Grand Coalition with the Social Democrats.  On the other hand, if the Liberals’ results are better than the exit polls predict, they’ll very narrowly manage to preserve their coalition.  (Also note that the Left/Linke are the pariah ex-communists, who the SPD will not form a coalition with, even if that would otherwise be a route to power.)

So did the AfD play the role of a “spoiler” in the same way as large third-party candidates do in the U.S., stealing votes from parties which would exceed the threshold?  I suppose it depends on whether you consider them to have had a legitimate chance to get over the 5% threshold — and what’s surprising is that they seemingly did much better than forecast, since the polls show  AfD only as part of an “other” category, so the seemed not to merit a separate figure for their results at all.

UPDATE:  Merkel seems to be very close to an absolute majority — unprecedented in German election history.  Wow.  Watching the election returns now.

UPDATE II:  latest results are that the CDU/CSU has exactly 303 out of 606 seats.  She’d need one more.  The Greens?

Final Update: Official returns are in, and the results are less dramatic; still a win for Merkel, but clearly below the 50% threshold, so the only question remaining is who their coalition partner is.