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{"id":831,"date":"2013-09-22T22:47:00","date_gmt":"2013-09-22T22:47:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/election-update-grand-coalition.html"},"modified":"2013-09-22T22:47:00","modified_gmt":"2013-09-22T22:47:00","slug":"election-update-grand-coalition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/janetheactuary\/2013\/09\/election-update-grand-coalition.html","title":{"rendered":"Election update: Grand Coalition?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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

According to the two major exit polls (ARD\/ZDF), the results are:<\/p>\n

CDU\/CSU: 42%\/42.3%
SPD:\u00a0 26%\/26.3%
Greens:\u00a0 8.1%\/8%
Left (Linke):\u00a0 8.5%\/8.5%
Liberals (FDP):\u00a0 4.7%\/4.5%
AfD (Euroskeptics):\u00a0 4.9%\/4.8%
Pirates:\u00a0 2.3%<\/p>\n

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 \u201cliberal\u201d 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\u2019s Christian Democrats\u00a0will be forced into a Grand Coalition with the Social Democrats.\u00a0 On the other hand, if\u00a0the Liberals\u2019\u00a0results are better than the exit polls predict, they\u2019ll very narrowly manage to preserve their coalition.\u00a0 (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.)<\/p>\n

So did the AfD play the role of a \u201cspoiler\u201d in the same way as large third-party candidates do in the U.S., stealing votes from parties which would exceed the threshold?\u00a0 I suppose it depends on whether you consider them to have had a legitimate chance to get over the 5% threshold \u2014 and what\u2019s surprising is that they seemingly did much better than forecast, since the polls<\/a> show\u00a0 AfD only as part of an \u201cother\u201d category, so the seemed not to merit a separate figure for their results at all.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:\u00a0 Merkel seems to be very close to an absolute majority \u2014 unprecedented in German election history.\u00a0 Wow.\u00a0 Watching the election returns now.<\/p>\n

UPDATE II:\u00a0 latest results are that the CDU\/CSU has exactly 303 out of 606 seats.\u00a0 She\u2019d need one more.\u00a0 The Greens?<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"