"The election winner is almost known in Germany" – three scenarios of what the next government could look like

The question is not who will be Germany's next chancellor, but which of his rivals will join him in government.

So, while the newspaper politician It is fairly certain that Friedrich Merz's conservatives will be in power – the result seems almost certain according to the polls – but that is only where the story begins, as the design of Germany's political system means that a party coalition is almost inevitable.

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And while the overall winner of the February 23 elections seems fairly predictable, the composition of the coalition is still very uncertain.

Merz's center-right alliance – the Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union – currently has support of around 30 percent, well ahead of all other parties. The center-left Social Democrats and the Greens are expected to finish with around 16 percent and 13 percent, respectively.

In second place, with just over 20 percent, is the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). But all other parties have rejected the possibility of working with them in a coalition, the Telegraph reports.

According to politicians in Merz's party, the least desirable outcome would be a three-way coalition, because of the infighting that would inevitably ensue. A troubled alliance would mirror the problems that defined the last government – ​​led by the SPD with the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens – which fell in December and led to this snap election.

As with all of the possible scenarios listed below, much depends on the turnout of each party compared to the other parties. And everything is still open.

If the center right and left have a good choice: GroKo

The Große Koalition – “grand coalition,” or GroKo for short – is one of the classic government configurations in Germany, consisting of the conservatives and the SPD. Germany has been governed by a GroKo four times since 1949, three times under the previous chancellor, Angela Merkel.

However, the conservatives have shifted significantly to the right under Merz, making compromise with the center-left more challenging.

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"It will be difficult after the elections," he said this week, leaving open whether he would prefer to work with the SPD or the Greens.

He then mentioned a man who, according to him, had “impressively shown” how to negotiate: Boris Rhein, the current prime minister of the state of Hesse and a member of the Merz CDU.

After winning the 2023 regional elections, Rhein played the SPD and the Greens off against each other. He ultimately chose to work with the SPD, which was said to be the most suitable partner and more willing to compromise.

Merz has frequently cited Hesse in recent weeks as a model. At the national level, too, the SPD is expected to be more flexible – especially when it comes to restricting migration, a key promise from Merz.

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However, a post-election reconciliation is likely to lead to a reshuffle within the SPD. While current Chancellor Olaf Scholz has already ruled out serving in a cabinet under Merz, Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and party leader Lars Klingbeil, both centrist figures, are expected to rise to higher positions.

If the Greens are doing well and the others not so much: Kiwi

Three of Germany's 16 states are currently led by a coalition of conservatives and Greens – sometimes called a Kiwi coalition – but such an alliance would be a novelty at the national level.

Politically, there is overlap on foreign policy and defense spending, with both parties criticizing Scholz for his indecisiveness in support of Ukraine. But there are major differences in their positions on migration, with Merz promising to close Germany's borders from day one of his term, while the Greens consider such a plan illegal.

This gap deepened last week when Merz announced his willingness to push through parliamentary proposals restricting migration, even with support from the AfD, a move that weakened Germany's so-called "wall of defense" against the far right and sparked a bitter pre-election debate that struck at the core of the country's post-war identity.

Moreover, Markus Söder, the charismatic and vocal leader of the Bavarian conservatives, has long ruled out the possibility of a coalition with the Greens.

For this reason, the party is expected to serve primarily as a tool of influence for the conservatives in their negotiations with the SPD.

If smaller parties do well: Tripartite

Although post-World War II Germany has not had much experience with coalitions of more than two parties (Scholz's post-2021 written triad was the first three-party alliance in more than six decades), political fragmentation and the end of the dominance of the two traditional parties could make such an arrangement the new norm.

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In fact, a three-way alliance could be difficult to avoid if two of the three smaller parties currently in parliament – ​​the Greens, the FDP and the Left – were to return to it.

In this case, the most likely options are:

– a coalition called the “German Coalition” (composed of the CDU/CSU, SPD and FDP)

= or (less likely) a Kenyan coalition (CDU/CSU, SPD and the Greens) = because the party colors match the Kenyan flag, which is black, red and green.

The opinion among the parties is that such a scenario – which may be necessary anyway – is extremely undesirable, as the deep divisions between them would make the next government as contentious as the last one. /Telegraph/