According to recent polls, there will be a neck-and-neck race between Merkel’s center-right Union bloc and the Social Democrats, with the latter marginally ahead.

The Greens, which are running in third place behind the center-left SPD and center-right CDU/CSU, are expected to play a major role in the country’s next government.

Germany uses the mixed-member proportional representation system, a system of proportional representation combined with elements of first-past-the-post voting.

The Bundestag has 598 nominal members, elected for a four-year term; these seats are distributed between the sixteen German states in proportion to the states' number of eligible voters. (ILKHA)