If you follow the whole episode following the election, it’s probably one of the worst episodes since WW II.
The SPD (getting on 22-percent) in the election...said right off the bat that they refused to participate in another coalition for four years.
So Plan A for Merkel was to form around the Green Party, and roughly six weeks later....found that it just won’t occur.
So they went back to the SPD, and it appears that it just won’t work. The expectation is either another election or run a minority government (likely to fail within two years and trigger another election anyway).
Most want to Merkel retire now, and the SPD chief (Schulz) retire as well.
The CDU and CSU have effectively functioned as one party for almost the entire post WWII era. The CDU doesn’t run candidates in Bavaria and the CSU doesn’t try to expand out of Bavaria. That is one of the core realities of German politics.
The fact that the CSU is taking a separate position from the CDU on a key issue like immigration is the real headline here.
This shows the weakness of a parliamentary, proportional representation system. A winner take all system such as ours would force the parties to be more representative of the majority of the people and thus more centrist.
It would also naturally lead to basically a two party system and the winning “coalition” of ideas would be determined by the electorate and not by backroom dealings by politicians after the people have spoken.