I've excercised my hardly fought for right to vote (I only got the German citizenship a few years ago), and ... it looks like there is no winner. None of the highly advertised coalitions of socialists and greens or christian democrats and liberals has the necessary votes for the majority. The undeclared winner of the election is the "left" party, who managed to sneak into the parliament on a wave of "leftist street-credibility" mix of anger over social reforms and miserable economic performance of the current governing coalition. They managed to get more votes than the established greens, thereby making both "red-green" and "black-yellow" governments impossible.
The remaining, possible combinations for government coalitions are not desired by the politicians, after a fast and partially bitter election campaign. The campaign got started after the socialist chancellor Schroeder, in a fit of panic after losing his home-state to the christian democrats in regional elections, decided to walk a constitutionally questionable thin line towards the reelections in hope that he'll be able to regain voter confidence.
So much for that brilliantly desperate and pointless plan: it didn't work at all. Quite to the contrary, both the socialists and the greens lost seats in the parliament, losing their majority by a huge margin.
On the other side of the German bipartisan divide, the challenger Merkel, starting off with a healthy majority a few months ago, managed to see it dwindle away while the socialists campaigned increasingly aggressively and effectively against her, and her party's badly communicated reform plans. She ended up scoring one of the worst results for christian democrats ever.
The margin between the socialists and christian democrats is around a percent in favour of the christian democrats. It is small enough for Schroeder to openly challenge Merkel's ability to form any government, without his participation. It seems that in a (most likely) coalition between socialists and christian democrats, there would be no place for both Schroeder and Merkel, so one of them will have to find a way to step down in dignity. Given that the German elections are not over yet, since the vote in a part of Dresden is delayed for two weeks due to the unexpected death of an extreme-right direct candidate (the German voting system is complex. Really complex. I'll mention just one word "Überhangmandat" and let you google for it if you need to know one of several weird bits and pieces of the German voting system), we are bound to see two more weeks of heavy trash talk from all parties, fighting for another 100000 votes and one sure seat.
If tonight's TV debates between the party leaders are an indication, it's going to be some heavy, irrational trash talk time. A coalition between christian democrats and socialists won't work, since they can not agree who would be heading it. A coalition between socialists, greens and liberals or a coalition between christian democrats, greens and liberals (which would be a novum) won't work since the liberals have refused to enter a coalition with any member of the current socialist-green government. A coalition between any of the blocks with the "left" party won't work either, since they are despised by all the other parties for ruining it for everyone (and being way too contrarian with their opposition towards social reforms and pacifism), and the leftists seem to be quite happy about it.
Chances are, if the politicians continue playing their love-hate relationship games, we'll have another indecisive election for christmas. Yay. Too bad that elections are not a cure for a lack of comprehensive leadership and good ideas in all the camps.