Germany Election Votes Are Cast. What Happens Now?
Now that the votes are cast, the real work in Berlin can begin.
While reconstituting parliament is relatively easy and must be done in the next three weeks, no party is expected to get enough votes to govern alone and outright. That means Germany is likely headed for a coalition government — and the process of building one could take months.
The party with the most votes on Sunday will have to find partners. Depending on how many small parties enter parliament and how well the big ones do, the next government could need two or three parties to get together.
In the coming days, Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, will invite the leader of the winning party — widely expected to be Friedrich Merz, from the Christian Democrats, or C.D.U. — to Bellevue Palace to ask him to try to form a government. That will involve talking with other parties to try to find the partners to get a majority — 316 seats — in parliament.
In reality, the leaders of parties have already been thinking about all that for some time, and certain options, like involving the hard-right Alternative for Germany, are unlikely. But the initial talks are important to show that all options are — theoretically, at least — on the table.
Next, parties that are open to a coalition will come together for pre-coalition talks. Held with just a few leaders from each party, those talks can be thought of as a really boring first date, where the parties check whether they might fit together. And sometimes, they don’t: In 2017, the leader of the liberal Free Democrats surprisingly broke off talks with Angela Merkel’s C.D.U. and Ms. Merkel had to start searching for a coalition partner all over again.
Once the parties agree that they can see a future together, they move on to formal coalition talks.
Those are the most complex part of the negotiations, and typically take the longest. Parties get together to agree on specific laws they hope to pass during their tenure and to divvy up ministerial posts. Just because party functionaries put so much time and effort into these discussions, however, does not mean that the coalition always ends in agreement.
As neighboring Austria showed when its conservative-far-right coalition talks surprisingly ended in January, the most likely outcome of such a failure would be to go talk with other parties again.
Once the coalition agreement is drafted, and the ministries set, parties may have to go back to their base to get approval. Only then do parties sign the agreement and return to parliament to elect the chancellor, who then names his ministers.
Until then, Olaf Scholz and his ministers will remain on as the caretaker government.
How long all of that would take remains to be seen; in the past, it has varied greatly from government to government. In 2017, it took 171 days. Ms. Merkel remained chancellor for 73 days after the 2021 election before being replaced by Mr. Scholz.
