On Sunday, the Federal Republic of Germany will hold national elections for its parliament, the Bundestag. Although elections were originally scheduled for September of this year, the collapse of the current German coalition, named the Ampelkoalition because of the colors associated with the coalition members, which was headed by the center-left Social Democratic Party (S.P.D.), led to early elections. The collapse of the coalition was planned out over the course of several weeks by its smallest member, the libertarian Free Democratic Party (F.D.P) in a manuever it refered to as “Operation D-Day.”

The F.D.P. is a small party which often struggles to clear the 5% voting threshold required to have any members elected to the Bundestag. With the coalition unpopular in polls, it is reported that the F.D.P.’s leadership believed that it could fail to have any members elected to the Bundestag in the upcoming election if it failed to break with its governing partners.

But although the F.D.P. drove the collapse of the so-called Ampelkoalition, it is unlikely to play a significant role in the next German government; in fact, current polling indicates that its worst fears may be realized and it may fail to achieve any representation in the Bundestag whatsoever.

The Issues

As Sunday’s election approaches, a number of issues have come to the fore: Germany’s economy, its security, immigration from the Middle East, and an extremist far right.

With just 3.2% unemployment, Germany’s economy looks good at first glance. The country’s economy has struggled to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic as its industrial sector flounders to compete with the People’s Republic of China, and, despite some modest recovery in living standards, the German economy has descended into two straight years of recession. A recent analysis in The New York Times indicated that Germany is also struggling in relative terms: other E.U. countries are in economically advantageous positions. Another key factor which may be causing perceptions of economic struggle are high energy prices resulting from Germany’s decoupling with the Russian Federation after its invasion of Ukraine.

And that invasion looms large: the most significant issue of consequence in the current election cycle is almost certainly security. With U.S. President Donald Trump threatening to not honor American Article Five commitments, it is possible that Germany’s low level of military funding commitments has under-balanced. Today’s world stage is proving a far more dangerous and competitive place than might have been anticipated fifteen or twenty years ago. With uncertain American commitments, Germany and its European allies may need to significantly strengthen themselves militarily in order to compete with Russia, China, and possibly the United States.

Not only has the United States threatened to abandon Europe on issues of security, but Mr. Trump’s willingness to impose harsh, “reciprocal” tariffs further endangers Germany’s already struggling economy. With an apparent change in American alignment taking shape, Europe may need to rapidly shift to adapt to a transformed geopolitical landscape.

But one of the most significant issues in Germany’s election is immigration. Immigration is generally a driver of economic growth, but it can often revitalize racist sentiments and nativist fears. This is certainly the case in Germany, a far right movement has developed in response to Syrian refugees: the Alternative for Germany (A.f.D.). The extremist party, which I have heard Germans compare to the Nazi Party (N.S.D.A.P.), has been ostracized from German politics; the other major political parties have committed to a firewall in which none of them will form a coalition which includes the A.f.D. Although this approach may keep the far right out of power, it complexifies the process of forming a coalition far more difficult.

Forming a Coalition

The party projected to win a plurality of votes in Sunday’s election is the Christian Democratic Union (C.D.U.), and its Bavarian counterpart, the Christian Social Union (C.S.U.). The parties, collectively referred to as the Union, offer a center-right perspective on both fiscal and social matters. The Union has dominated German politics for long stretches since its founding in 1949. It’s the party of Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl, and Angela Merkel. It is, unsurprisingly, the leading party in the polls right now, with projections consistently predicting that it will receive nearly a third of the vote.

The leader of the Union, and its candidate to become the next chancellor, is Friedrich Merz. Mr. Merz offers a compelling profile to German voters. More hawkish than the vacillating Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Mr. Merz seems ready to seriously engage with the serious security issues Germany and other E.U. member states are facing. Although Chancellor Angela Merkel, the C.D.U.’s previous leader, supported a disastrous (albeit widely supported) policy of decommissioning German nuclear power plants, her four-term tenure proved relatively strong overall. If Mr. Merz can build upon Dr. Merkel’s while working within the constraints of a less secure world, he will do well.

In order shore up Union support, Mr. Merz has embraced more right-leaning approaches to immigration. Although I believe that restrictions on immigration are often flawed, every vote the A.f.D. siphons off from conventional political parties makes forming a coalition more difficult.

Indeed, although projections indicate the Union will easily win a plurality of the vote, it is virtually inconceivable that it will have enough votes to form a government on its own. Moreover, unless it chooses to form a coalition with the far-right A.f.D., the Union will likely need not one, but two separate parties to partner with in order to form a government. One of these two parties will almost certainly be either the S.P.D. or the Green Party (Grüne), both of which seem likely to receive respectable double digit percentages of seats in the Bundestag after the election.

The S.P.D. is the center-left counterpart to the Union. Founded in 1875, the S.P.D. has been a major player in the politics of the Federal Republic, even if it has proven slightly less successful than the Union. Mr. Scholz, the face of the party, has proven remarkably unpopular over the past several years, according to polls of the German public, his net approval rating is currently hovering at -33%. That’s right, Mr. Scholz is more unpopular in Germany than President Trump is in the United States. Despite Mr. Scholz’s promises to increase Germany’s military spending and meet its treaty obligations after the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine, the country has continued to underfund its military. A joke I hear from colleagues sometimes goes like this: “there’s only one thing standing between Vladimir Putin and Berlin: the Polish Army.”

Yet despite the failures of Mr. Scholz’s administration, the S.P.D. would make a strong coalition partner for the Union; its relative centrism and size, could, depending on the final outcome of the election, allow it to provide all the votes needed to form a government. Current polls make this outcome unlikely, but given that the stability of a coalition tends to increase inverse to the number of parties partaking in it, a Union–S.P.D. coalition (called a Großekoalition), could be in the books.

It is more likely, however, that the Union and the S.P.D. combined will not have enough votes to form a government. Although it is possible that the Union would ally itself with the S.P.D. and a junior partner, it seems unlikely: the F.D.P. is not guaranteed to hold any seats in the Bundestag after the election, and the other two small parties, the Left (Linke) and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (B.S.W.) do not necessarily line up with the Union agenda politically. Of the two, the B.S.W. is more aligned with the Union, but it has been accused of being Russophillic, which may be a deal breaker in national elections, even though the the B.S.W. has put coalitions over the top in state governments.

This leaves what I see as the most likely outcome of the election: a Union-S.P.D.-Grüne coalition. The Greens are somewhat radical on environmental policy, but they have proven themselves capable of governing with the S.P.D. over the past few years. Although bringing two medium-to-large sized parties into a coalition will be a difficult process, it seems like the most efficient approach for the Union to take, should it and the S.P.D. fail to have enough votes to form a Großekoalition.

Concluding Throughts

The unpopularity of the Scholz government was broadly caused, ironically, by the failure of Dr. Merkel’s administration to anticipate an increasingly erratic Russia. If Germany had not shut down so many nuclear power plants, there would not have been such tremendous spikes in energy prices after the German and Russian economies decoupled. If Germany already had a well-funded military, it would not need to worry about building up a military capable of engaging emergent security threats.

With a more hawkish, Union-led coalition likely in the works, Germany may finally join its Eastern European counterparts in preparing to counterbalance other major powers. Given that both Mr. Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen belong to the same political party, I am hopeful that a Germany under Mr. Merz would collaborate with a Europe as it confronts a new generation of challenges, and that it would be able to lead a continent that may need to rely on itself for years to come.