Voting underway in German general elections

Germans are voting on Sunday in national elections set to hand Chancellor Angela Merkel a third term, making her Europe’s only leader to survive its financial crisis, but potentially force her into governing with her main rivals.

Polls opened at 8am local time with nearly 62 million voters called to cast ballots in Europe's top economy. Initial television estimates are expected shortly after booths close at 4pm locally.

After shepherding Europe's top economy through the debt turmoil, Merkel emerged more popular than ever due to her reassurance as the crisis felled leaders in France, Greece, Italy and Spain.

The most likely way she could be ousted is if Germany's three left-of-center parties – the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, and the Left – form a coalition with one another, and win a larger percentage of the vote than Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its coalition partner, the Free Democratic Party (FDP).

But this seems unlikely, as the SPD has ruled out forming a coalition with the Left.

However, although she will likely continue to be chancellor, this election may force Merkel to seek a new coalition partner. If the FDP fails to win the five percent of the vote needed to retain its seats in parliament, a "grand coalition" between Germany’s two biggest parties, the CDU and SPD, seems likely.

Several voters in the left-leaning district of Kreuzberg, Berlin (just 12 percent voted for Merkel's CDU in 2009), told Al Jazeera that social justice issues were their primary concern. One of them, Mara L. – a Kreuzberg resident who declined to give her last name – said she was voting for the anti-capitalist Left party.

The eurozone bailouts passed during Merkel's tenure have only aided the banks, she said, not the people.

Pollsters suggest that voters will re-elect the 59-year-old, whose nickname "Mutti" ("Mummy") can seem incongruous with her other often-used description as the world's most powerful woman.

But the burning question will be with whom she will govern.

"Rarely was it so close. Merkel's coalition only has a razor-thin majority in the polls," the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily said, adding that many of the near 62 million voters only make up their minds at the last minute.

Merkel boasts her current center-right coalition has been Germany's most successful since reunification in 1990, enjoying a robust economy and a jobless rate of less than seven percent.

But her stated aim for her conservative CDU to stay in power with its junior partners, the pro-business FDP hinges on the smaller party's unpredictable fortunes.

"The continued governing by this coalition remains uncertain," Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist from Berlin's Free University, said.

If the alliance fails to rally a ruling majority, Merkel could be forced back into the arms of her traditional rivals, the SPD, with whom she governed in a loveless "grand coalition" during her first term.

Voter turnout rates have historically been quite high in Germany. But the level of enthusiasm seems to be relatively low in this election, and a sizable chunk of the electorate say they won't vote at all.

Michael Stark, who sells bicycles at Berlin's Bergmannstrasse flea market, is one such non-voter. He describes Germany's political parties as being "all pirates, all pigs", decrying the lack of a national minimum wage and what he told Al Jazeera are high poverty rates.

Under the watchful eye of Germany's European partners, a new eurosceptic party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) could also prove a wild card, either by clawing enough support to send MPs into parliament or wooing disgruntled center-right voters away.

"For Chancellor Merkel the eurosceptics are becoming a problem," Spiegel Online commented on the eve of the vote.

"If the protest party manages to jump into the Bundestag (lower house of parliament), that may cost the black-yellow coalition power," it added, referring to the color code for Merkel's current alliance. But polls show their victory is unlikely.

Three polls in the run-up show the AfD, which advocates ditching the single currency and an "orderly dissolution" of the eurozone, falling below the five-per cent hurdle needed to enter parliament.

But some analysts and pollsters have not ruled it out amid fresh Greek aid fears, stressing it is hard to assess the fledgling party's chances because it has no election track record and supporters may not own up to backing it in surveys.

Merkel again hammered home Europe's importance for Germany at a last-chance push for votes in Berlin Saturday, saying her country "can only do well in the long term if all of Europe does well."

"This is why the stabilization of the euro is not just a good thing for Europe but it is also in Germany's fundamental interest," she said, as a band belted out "Angie must save the world."

Supporters of stronger stimulus measures have pinned their hopes on the SPD, whose gaffe-prone candidate Peer Steinbrueck, 66, has struggled to score points and trailed Merkel's conservatives by 13 points in the last opinion poll.

A former finance minister in Merkel's 2005-2009 grand coalition, Steinbrueck has run into trouble during the campaign, most recently with a surly middle-finger front-page photo of him as a non-verbal reply to a question on his stumbling candidacy.

He has zeroed in on the growing low-wage sector and calls for an across-the-board minimum wage, while Merkel favors more flexible pay agreements hammered out between employers and unions, regionally and by sector.

In his final-day stump speech, he urged voters to remove "the most inactive government that has made the most reversals" in over two decades and mocked Merkel for "going round and round."

Al Jazeera and wire services. With reporting from Al Jazeera's Sam Bollier in Berlin.