New direction for Germany

The polls are closed and the final results are in. Angela Merkel will be Chancellor of Germany for another four years (excluding intra-party wrangling).

However, the make-up of her government has changed dramatically, since she has gone from a coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats (SDP) to one with the right-wing, free market Free Democrat Party (FDP). Now she will be operating with a very narrow parliamentary majority and will most likely have to reduce her consensual style of governing and accede to some of the FDP's more free market policies.

And speaking of a narrow majority, the style of politics will change hugely over the next four years. Previously the government, while fractious, had 443 seats in a 614 seat Bundestag, with the rest split reasonably equally between three other parties. This meant that there was little opposition to the government's policy, since none of those three parties was strong enough or received enough media attention individually to hold the government to account (and they all hated each other too much to work together). Now one of the main parties (SDP) is in opposition, and will be able to lead a powerful campaign against the government, along with it's ideological (if not political) allies the Left and Greens. Expect politics become a LOT more combative.

Also, not only has the make-up of her government moved to the right, but the power of the FDP has increased dramatically from when they were previously in government. In previous governments the Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) have had the lions share of the seats, allowing them to direct policy with little reference to their much smaller partner. But with a narrow majority in the Bundestag and the FDP scoring a record number of members, Merkel may be compelled to take more FDP policies on as government policy - especially since right-wing members of her own party will now be pushing for a shift away from the amorphous blob that was the governing ideology of the grand coalition.

But what does this mean for the parties? Firstly it means that people like Merkel as Chancellor, but did not like the grand coalition that she was forced to work under. Both the CDU and the CSU (the Bavarian sister party of the CDU) lost votes from 2005 (although the CDU gained seats), while the SDP saw it's vote plummet by more than 10% and lost more than 70 seats. The big winners were the FDP on the right, and both minor parties (Greens and Left Party) on the left.

Secondly it shows again that while Merkel is an excellent Chancellor, she is not a good campaigner. The centre-right went down in the polls during the campaign period, and only squeaked in with a majority. Large numbers of media stories have discussed Merkel (and, to be fair, the SDP leader) 'snored their way to election day'.

And thirdly expect serious ructions to break out from the ranks of the SDP (and these ructions could be a fore-runner to similar problems in the Labour party after the UK election next year). The SDP received it's lowest share of the vote ever and much of the blame appears to be landing on the head of the centrists (such as former Chancellor Schroeder). The argument by many appears to be a break with this centrist model and a sharp move to the left to combat The Left Party, which has been cannibalising increasing numbers of SDP voters for the last three elections. Obviously we cannot know who will win the battle for the SDP's soul, but if it does move sharply to the left to combat the Left, it could well find itself locked out of power for a long time to come.