The CDU/CSU cannot form a coalition with the SPD and get a parliamentary majority. They need a third partner, and the Greens, with the realist Robert Habeck leading them, are the ideal partners.
The "Left (Die Linken) " are out of the question. They are the successors to the old East German socialists who got their jollies by shooting to death people trying to flee at the Berlin Wall or the death strip, if outside of Berlin. Wearing a T shirt saying "Tax The Rich" fools no one here who knew what their founders advocated when they were in power. I have seen the villa where Putin was living when stationed in East Germany as a young KGB officer, and the wall pock-marked with bullet holes a few houses down where the SED (predecessor of the the PDS, which became Die Linken) killed off particularly "uncomfortable" dissidents. They are currently recruiting your voters, hoping they will forget what the party's founders were originally all about, much as the far right AfD is trying to do with its young voters on the right ("Nazi, Schmatzi" says Wernher von Braun).
Merz could put his coalition together by the weekend if everyone would act sensibly, and admit that 29% or less is not a towering mandate to set the tone. They will have to compromise plenty, and only Habeck has come out and said that this is inevitable. Merz is a feisty macho type who thought he had a divine right to the Chancellorship two election cycles ago. He will need some serious ego management before the coalition-building can get serious. I think Scholz and his party have been given a big enough reality check that they will not be putting up too many road blocks. Merz, himself, will be the biggest obstacle.
As for immigration, Germany is still a member of the Schengen treaty. With sea borders with Sweden, Finland, and the three Baltic nations, as well as land borders with Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, France, Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic and Poland, ALL of which are Schengen signatories, Germany's interior border is completely porous. So far, they are dealing with it, but it is enough for one dark skinned nut case yelling "Allah U Akbar" and wielding a knife to give the far right ample ammunition to advocate closing off all the borders again. It ain't gonna happen, but that won't stop them from using it as a campaign slogan. I just came back to Germany from Switzerland by train yesterday. There was a team of two German border police who walked through the train, looking a little bored, but stopping nobody, at least not in my car. Sometimes they'll appear in the trains from Holland or Belgium and ask everyone for ID, but I don't recall them in recent years finding a passenger with enough of a problem to warrant removal from the train. After all, if they're on a train to Germany from another Schengen country, someone had to have let them in to begin with.
I'll say this about Merz--he has a short time to prove he's the tough macho he wants to project, and not nervously jump every time the AfD says, "BOO!" He will be taken a LOT less seriously if he falters in this.
And, one more time, to pronounce his name correctly, "Merz" is like "Hair" or the "Old Grey Mare" and a "ts" on the end. It is NOT pronounced like "hers" as in "his and hers." In German, as in Italian, the "z" is pronounced "ts." After all, no one calls Hitler a "Nozzy," and no one calls Musk a "Neo-Nozzy." My poor German wife endured 16 torturous years of hearing Americans pronouncing her Chancellor's name as "Murkle." As with Merz, "Mair-kel" is correct.
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