At first it seemed as if Germany's conservative challenger Angela Merkel was going to romp home. Then a flurry of polls last week showed that Germany's chancellor Gerhard Schröder was closing the gap. Now the latest poll today suggests that Angie might get the majority she wants after all – but only just.
With five days to go until Germans vote in Sunday's general election, it appears that Europe's largest country is split down the middle. The latest survey by the Emnid agency, carried out between Friday and Monday, puts support for the Schröder's Social Democrats at 33.5%, one point lower than a similar poll last week. Merkel's Christian Democrats are at 42% – a gain of 1.5 percentage points from the agency's last poll.
Most crucially, though, Angie's centre-right coalition (including her Bavarian sister party the CSU, and the liberal Free Democrats) is now on 48.5% – in a dead heat with the left parties (Social Democrats, Greens, Left party) who are also on 48.5%. If the outcome of the election was unclear a few days ago, it's now positively murky.
I've discussed the possible coalitions that might emerge after Sunday in a previous blog.
There appear to be two serious options. One is a "grand coalition" between the CDU and SPD, with Angie as chancellor and Peer Steinbrück, the SPD's former minister-president in North Rhein-Westphalia as her deputy. The other more remote possibility is another red-green coalition – with the support (possibly from outside) of the Left party, an outcome the CDU is playing up but which doesn't really appear to be a starter.
Intriguingly, though, both the SPD and the CDU are now discussing other options. One SPD campaigner I talked to yesterday in Hamburg was convinced that if Merkel fails to get a majority, there could be a "traffic light" coalition between the SPD, Greens and the FDP. The FDP's charmless leader Guido Westerwelle has categorically ruled this out.
But – so the argument goes- there are plenty of others in the FDP who are prepared to do a deal, even if Guido isn't. A CDU MP, meanwhile, yesterday told me that the CDU parliamentary faction is actively discussing a CDU/CSU-FDP-Green coalition, with Joschka Fischer's Greens kept on in government.
But would Joschka do a deal with Angie and Guido? The only certainty at the moment is that the election is going down to the wire- with Dresden 1, the constituency where voting will now take place two weeks later because of the death of a far-right candidate, possibly determining who gets to be chancellor.
