German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Sunday led her party to win yet another term. While a formal announcement is expected to be made early next week, it is certain that Merkel would rule as head of a Black-Yellow alliance comprising the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Bavarian Christian Socialist Union (CSU) and the and the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP), which was the CDU’s preferred choice always.

The great winner of the elections was the liberal FDP, which returned its best result ever. On the other hand, the Left and the Greens, while gaining votes, would have to sit in the opposition.

Though the CDU fared worse than in the 2004 elections, its cause was helped by huge losses suffered by its current alliance partner — the Centre-Leftist Social Democratic Party (SPD), which was hoping to dislodge it as the single-biggest party.

The CDU, which fought the election on the issue of strong leadership in the times of recession, wasn’t too keen to continue the “grand coalition” government that it formed after the last elections along with the Centre-Leftist Social Democratic Party (SPD).

Observed Jan Kretzschmar, a political expert, “Both big parties have suffered, but the result of the SPD was worse. It got hurt because of a split in the party and wrong strategy.”

In a country, where names of colours are used to refer to various political parties, these are many possibilities.

Apart from the grand coalition between the Blacks (CDU) and Reds (SPD), the other possible post-result scenarios were Black-Yellow (CDU + FDP), Red-Red-Yellow (SPD + Left Party + FDP), (CDU + FDP + Green Party), and, finally, the Traffic Light Coalition referring to a possibility where SPD, FDP and the Greens come together to rule the government.

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