Germany votes and the coalition work begins

The German election produced, on the evening of 23 February, the result that the polls had promised for months, and the first-place finish that the projections had predicted carried the country into the next phase of its politics: the coalition negotiations that the German system schedules after every election. The conservative bloc finished first, with the governing parties in retreat and the smaller parties holding the balance that the arithmetic had prepared them for, and the evening coverage gave the country its first picture of the parliament that the next government will have to assemble. The vote settled the distribution of the seats; the negotiations that begin now will settle everything else.

The numbers of the evening were the story of the campaign told in the only language that matters at the end. The conservative lead was confirmed at the scale that the polls had indicated, the social democrats fell to their weakest result in the postwar era, and the smaller parties, the liberals, the greens, the left, the far right, delivered the results that the coverage had been modelling for weeks. The turnout was reported as higher than the recent elections, and the higher turnout, the analysts noted, had not favoured the governing parties, which is the pattern that elections in hard times have taught the psephologists to expect. The seats will be allocated over the coming days, and the allocation will produce the arithmetic that the negotiations will have to satisfy.

The reaction of the leaders, broadcast in the hours after the projections, was the standard repertoire of the genre: the winner’s measured triumph, the losers’ dignified concession, and the small parties’ insistence that the kingmaking power that the arithmetic had given them would be used responsibly. The conservative leader claimed the mandate that the first-place finish had earned, and claimed it with the particular care of a politician who knows that the mandate will be exercised through negotiation; the incumbent chancellor conceded with the graciousness that the office requires, and the concession closed a term that the electorate had judged. The television carried the reactions through the night, and the night belonged, as German election nights always do, to the psephologists and the party managers.

The negotiations that follow will be the real election, in the sense that the country’s politics have established over decades. The conservative bloc’s preferred partner is the social democrats, and the arithmetic of the evening gives the two blocs a parliamentary majority that the traditional partnership would provide; the alternative arrangements, the three-party combinations that the smaller parties have floated, remain on the table as the leverage of the negotiations. The talks will run for weeks, through the formation of the exploratory committees and the working groups that the German process organizes, and the talks will produce a coalition agreement that the party congresses must ratify; the agreement, when it comes, will be the country’s real constitution for the next four years.

The new government will inherit the country’s problems at the scale that the campaign had described: the industrial adjustment, the energy prices, the fiscal rules, the welfare state, and the international questions that the new American administration’s policies have made urgent. The coalition that the negotiations produce will be judged by its first year, and the first year will be judged by the management of the adjustment that the election was about. The vote on 23 February was the country’s verdict on the past; the negotiations that begin now are the country’s attempt to build the future, and the building, in the German tradition, will be conducted in the patient, technical, exhausting language of the coalition talks. Germany voted, and the work began on the same night.