I will vote in a couple of minutes.
Prediction: great coalition.

I am still waiting for a charismatic German politician that gives me the feeling to represent me properly. Been doing so since 1999, when I started to actually care about politics.

Until today I was under the impression that everyone loved or at least tolerated Merkel, but I suppose the tendency of the internet to hate anyone who isn't practically a neo-Marxist is as strong in Germany as in Britain.

There's not much to say about that topic, really. I wanted to open a thread explaining the german political system and its most important parties but right now there's just not much to discuss. The polls are really close and in a multi-party system it is way harder to predict the outcome of an election if polls are this close.

Average polls (adjusted for bias of some polling institutes):

CDU (Conservatives): 39% (+5% compared to 2009 election)
SPD (Social Dems): 27% (+4%)
Greens: 9% (-2%)
Linke (socialists): 9% (-3%)
FDP (liberals): 5.5% (-9%)
--- (you need 5% of the total vote to enter the parliament)
Afd (anti-Euro): 4%
Pirates: 2%
NPD (Nazis): 1-2%

The thing here is there's just too many question marks to make any predictions right now: The FDP should make it but it's not a sure thing. AFD could get in or not, the Greens drowned in the polls recently and could very well end up below 9% (or higher - many people voted early when the Greens polled better) and the CDU (Merkel's party for you Americans) usually underperforms in elections for some reason. (in 2005 polls predicted 40% - they ended up with 35%. In 2009 polls predicted 35-37% - they ended up with 33.8%).

I read the title as ERECTIONS IN GERMANY! LOL

Yes, mostly this is true. But there are always things that go bad. an example that sheds bad light on the FDP: the coalition expanded some tax-exemptions (or to be more clear: lower tax-rate) to some more areas, including hotels. The FDP got some donation form a hotel-chain - that was very bad PR for the FDP. Also that it is going good is mostly attributed to the CDU and Merkel, so people ask themself if they really need the FDP.

While I don't like the CDU myself, it is wrong to call them Nazis. They may have had some Nazis in the party (most namely Filbinger), but that is true for almost every german party. The politics of the CDU is not a Nazi-politics. So I clearly disgree here.

Kantor said: This seems relevant:

LOL. Yes, the greatest virtue of Merkel is to do nothing. And in reality it IS good for politics to do less, many bad decisions are based in hastily made stuff.

Oh god... are you guys everywhere? It's like half the country is getting paranoid, really.

I restrained myself from answering on that, but the funny thing is, that it is always reduced to CDU and SPD. While we reasonably expect them to be the biggest parties, it could happen, that we germans all vote the Violets for >50%. The point that we expect CDU and SPD so strong is based in the knowledge that most people really prefer their politics.

Germany has been doing well economically but that is not generally attributed to government actions but a stong German economy. If anything people are worried about mounting German Debt to GDP as a result of persistent bailouts for less fiscally responsible nations such as Greece.

One currancy for many nations of differing economic situations was always going to have issue's where one nation disagree's with what another does.