When is german election

That was the case in the last Bundestag vote in , when Angela Merkel delivered a sombre speech to mark her party's underwhelming results. But talks on forming a government can take weeks, as in , when there was a failed attempt to form a Jamaica coalition with the CDU black , Greens and FDP yellow. Angela Merkel: Germany's shrewd political survivor.

Who wants to follow in Merkel's footsteps? Merkel party beats far right in eastern state vote. Image source, Getty Images. So, how will Germany's election work? What is the vote for? How is the chancellor selected? Which political parties are in contention?

Image source, Reuters. Armin Laschet was seen laughing on a visit to Erftstadt after the town was devastated by floods. CDU leader Armin Laschet would be Mrs Merkel's natural successor, but he has struggled to win over voters, particularly after he was pictured laughing during a visit to a flood-hit town in July. The centre-left SPD has been in coalition with the conservatives and on the eve of the vote is narrowly ahead of them in the polls.

Image source, EPA. Not long ago Mr Scholz's party was languishing in third place in the opinion polls. Olaf Scholz , Germany's finance minister, is the party's candidate for chancellor and has a real chance of victory.

The left-wing party focuses on climate change and social justice and earlier this year was leading the polls. Annalena Baerbock came under a series of attacks after the Greens surged into the. Greens leader Annalena Baerbock has not yet had a role in government but she could lead her party into a coalition. Just how far to the right is AfD? How is the winner decided? When Germans go to the polls, they get two votes. Why is the second vote decisive? So why does the Bundestag's size vary? Outgoing chancellor Angela Merkel really is going to step off that dance floor soon.

What better way to end a podcast dedicated to her last dance, i. DW's Max Hofmann waltzed the German chancellor through the interview and has the backstory for us in this final episode of "Merkel's last dance. After their defeat in the German election, the Christian Democrats have decided to let the grassroots members choose the next party leader directly.

But that strategy often backfires, as other parties have found. The Free Democrats is the smallest of three parties trying to form Germany's new government. But its chairman, Christian Lindner, is proving to be especially ambitious. DW takes a look at the man at the helm. The first session of the Bundestag's 20th legislative period began with the traditional gong, signaling that the largest and most diverse German parliament in history could finally convene.

With divergent platforms and a promise to have a new government before Christmas, the Social Democrats, Greens and business-focused Free Democrats have their work cut out for them. Party delegates have voted by a large majority to join formal negotiations with the Social Democrats and the neoliberal FDP to form the next government.

SPD party leadership on Friday voted unanimously to go-ahead with formal coalition talks, the Greens and FDP are scheduled to hold similar party votes on Sunday and Monday respectively.

The parties that made the most gains in the German election could reach common ground by the end of this week. Differences in tax policy and climate change are said to be the main sticking points in the talks. Irregularities and loopholes in the German capital on election day have shocked many observers.

Even though the results might not be affected, candidates and parties could still bring legal challenges. These narrow margins have led to a bewildering situation in which the country can simultaneously come close to a federal-government shutdown because of a failure to fund the government and to a default because of a failure to raise the debt ceiling, a statutory limit that serves not as an instrument of financial prudence but of legislative blackmail.

Those negotiations happen both within and between the parties, and in both cases they have taken on a tone that veers from fervent and idealistic to unyielding, bitter, cynical, meretricious, and absurd—sometimes at dizzying speed. It might, then, be instructive to look at another set of election-induced negotiations unfolding this week, some four thousand miles away.

Last Sunday, Germany held its first election in almost a generation in which Angela Merkel did not lead her party, the Christian Democratic Union which runs alongside its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, in federal elections. Merkel, who is sixty-seven, has been Chancellor since The C. But the biggest vote-getter, the center-left Social Democratic Party, known by its German initials S.

The Green Party was third, with Alternative for Germany AfD , a far-right party, came in at Two things should be clear from those numbers: that it will take a coalition, probably of three parties, to form a government, and that there is no clear analogue between German and American parties. Germans get to cast two votes: one for a local candidate and one for a party—again, the math is complicated. This provision tends to cause parties to proliferate and take on distinct identities, but it can also push them together to form coalitions.