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In the 2005 German federal election, as the campaign began the CDU/CSU under Angela Merkel had a clear lead and it was initially expected that Schroeder's SPD (currently in government as part of a coalition with the Greens) would take significant losses, leading to a conventional Black-Yellow (CDU/CSU-FDP) coalition headed by Merkel. However, over the course of the campaign the SPD made a recovery and the CDU/CSU lost momentum, eventually leading to a much more muddled result in which both the biggest parties lost seats. After flirting with odd combinations like the 'traffic light' (SPD-FDP-Green) or 'Jamaica' (CDU/CSU-FDP-Green) coalitions, the end result was a grand coalition between the CDU/CSU and SPD. This was the first federal grand coalition in Germany since reunification (West Germany had previously had one in the 1960s).
What if the campaign had gone differently and the result had been closer to what was expected at the start? What if Angela Merkel had become Chancellor at the head of a Black-Yellow CDU/CSU-FDP government and the SPD had been consigned to the opposition? How would German politics have changed as the Great Recession began months before the next scheduled election in 2009? With the SPD not in government as a junior coalition partner, could it defy the growing European rightward trend to head up a federal government in 2009?