from the Center for European Reform.

This is the CER podcast.

Hello and welcome to another episode of the CER podcast.

My name is Sophia Besch.

I'm here with Christian Odendale,

who's the CES chief economist

and also our eyes and ears in Berlin.

And so what we're going to talk about today is the German elections.

There are four main questions that I would like us to talk about.

The first one being, why does it look like Angela Merkel will win again?

The second, who can she actually govern with when she does?

What would these different governing coalition options mean for Europe?

And finally, what would they mean for Brexit?

Christian, are you in?

Fantastic.

Let's start.

Brilliant.

Two weeks before the election, if you have a look at the polls, the CDU-CS,

so Merkel's Conservative Party, stands at 37%.

The SPD, the Social Democrats, at only 21, and then we have three smaller parties.

The far left party, the Green Party, and the Far Right Party, and they're all around 10%.

How did that happen?

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