Thread by @gelliottmorris

Germany's ruling centre-right party has been overtaken in the polls by the Social Democrats, reviving the chance of a left-controlled 'traffic light' or 'Germany coalition with the Greens or classically liberal Free Democrats. 1/2 economist.com/graphic-detail…

2/2 There is still a lot of uncertainty, though — in fact, even more than there was last week (a product of changing correlations in the data). At this point in the campaign (a month out) history advises a pretty strong hedge against the polls using the results of the last elec.

CDU/CSU + SPD is viable, but there are some political obstacles and the probability of the parties winning a combined majority is under 50%. Red-Black-Green (sometimes 'Kenya') is not usually entertained federally, though it has worked in some länders.

https://twitter.com/danpolovina/status/1430535250187362306?s=20

This all being said, our model doesn't produce probabilities for coalition outcomes, only for seat totals for the constituent parties — because coalition negotiations are political and unpredictable, and our journalistic goal here is to explain how the polls translate to seats