Beginning tomorrow and through Sunday I will be reporting on the German elections, aka Bundestagswahl 2013, from Frankfurt, Mainz, Wiesbaden, and Berlin, as part of a study group sponsored by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation. The foundation is the nonprofit arm of the Free Democrat Party, the junior coalition partner of the Christian Democratic Union. Whereas the FDP won a record-setting 15 percent of the vote four years ago, this time around it is fighting for its life.

For most of the year, the election has been described as soporific and uneventful. Most of the polls indicated that the CDU and FDP (along with Bavaria’s Christian Social Union) would continue with its black-gold coalition—albeit with around 46 percent of the vote, just enough to rule. But in the last few weeks the CDU/CSU has been holding steady between 39 and 40 percent of the vote. The Free Democrats are polling, optimistically, at 5 percent. Keep in mind, 5 percent is the threshold in order to be represented in the Bundestag. If the FDP dips below this as it did in last Sunday’s Bavarian state election (at 3 percent), it is doomed. The CDU would then drop the Free Democrats and most likely govern with the Social Democrats (SPD) in a repeat of the grand coalition—one that gets little done but would keep Angela Merkel chancellor.