Well, things didn't go quite according to plan in the German elections:
Conservative challenger Angela Merkel's party won the most votes in German elections Sunday but fell short of a clear mandate to govern, according to official results. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder staged a dramatic comeback and proclaimed that he should head the next government.
The vote heralded the end of Schroeder's seven-year tenure but left in doubt who will follow. The inconclusive results make it likely that Germany's next government would be weakened because of the narrow vote margin and difficulties in forming a coalition...
The result was a major setback for Merkel, whose party was at 42 percent in polls the week before the election...
With 298 of 299 districts declaring, the results showed Merkel's Christian Democrats party with 35.2 percent of the vote compared to 34.3 percent for Schroeder's Social Democrats. Voting in the final district, Dresden, was delayed until Oct. 2 because of the death of a candidate. But that outcome was not expected to affect the final result.
Merkel's party won 225 seats, three more than the Social Democrats; the Free Democrats got 61, the Left Party 54 and the Greens 51. Germany's legislature has at least 598 seats — but often more — elected under proportional representation from party lists. The outgoing parliament, for example, has 601 lawmakers.
Merkel's preferred coalition partners — the pro-business Free Democrats — had 9.8 percent, leaving such an alliance short of outright victory. The Greens, the Social Democrats' current governing partner, had 8.1 percent; together, the two parties failed to reach a majority, ending Schroeder's government.
What next?
Both Merkel and Schroeder said they would talk to all parties except the new Left Party, a combination of ex-communists and renegade Social Democrats.
One leading possibility: a linkup between her Christian Democrats and Schroeder's Social Democrats, viewed by some as a recipe for paralysis in a country plagued by 11.4 percent unemployment...
If the new parliament cannot elect a chancellor in three attempts, President Horst Koehler could appoint a minority government led by the candidate with a simple majority.
So, that settled exactly nothing.