6 things you haven’t yet heard about Germany's election

Dear Reader,

First of all, sorry about the buzzfeedy headline. I assume you were bombarded with news about the election yesterday, so I stooped this low to grab your attention.

The headline numbers give a big swing to the Social Democrats (SPD), who seemed to be out of the race as little as two months ago but finished a nose ahead of the CDU/CSU with 25.7 percent to 24.1 percent of support.

The far-left Die Linke had such a dismal evening (4.9 percent of the vote) that a left-wing coalition (SPD-Green-Linke) is a mathematical impossibility. Meanwhile, both of the (formerly) big parties have ruled out another “grand coalition” (although they said that last time too).

That leaves two possibilities: the SPD building a three-way coalition with the Greens and the Free Democrats, or the CDU doing the same.

The Greens (14.8 percent) had a poor evening given the high expectations, but still recorded their best ever result. The liberal FDP also scored their best ever result at 11.5 percent. Both n…