Voting booths have opened in Germany

Parliamentary elections. (Arno Burgi/dpa via AP, file)

More than 60 million Germans can today vote for the country’s next parliament. Angela Merkel’s ‘Christian Democrats’ lead by a large margin, but the vote offers a lot of excitement.

 

The voting booths opened at 8 am on Sunday.

Recent polls show that Prime Minister Angela Merkel’s CDU / CSU are likely to get between 36 and 38% of the vote, while Martin Schulz’s Social Democrats (SPD) will get between 21 and 23%.

This has been the case for several months for the two parties that today constitute a coalition. Both parties have lost a few percent compared to previous elections, but the distance between them is remarkably unchanged.

However, between the four small parties which constitute the opposition in Germany, there is sharp rise in support, a knife that may determine whether the CDU SPD coalition continues, or if the CDU or SPD break apart and find other coalition partners.

Every day, the relationship between high-ranking FDP, The Green Left, Die Linke, and right-nationalist Alternative for Germany (AFD) changes.

All measurements show that the AFD, for the first time, will enter the Bundestag, and thus become the first party to the right of the CDU and CSU to gain seats in the National Assembly since the Second World War.

 

© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today