At a rally, backers of Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany with signs bearing her nickname.
BERLIN — Voters in Germany headed to the polls on Sunday for Parliamentary elections that will determine whether Chancellor Angela Merkel will lead the country, the largest economy in Europe, for a third term.
While Ms. Merkel has maintained a comfortable lead in opinion polls throughout her campaign, with surveys showing that her Christian Democrats could secure 39 percent of the vote, the bigger question is whether she will be able to continue with the center-right coalition she has led since 2009, or be forced to form a government with her main rivals.
Her partners in the current coalition, the Free Democrats, have been struggling. After winning nearly 15 percent of the vote four years ago, polls have indicated that they might not make the 5 percent threshold needed to win seats in the lower house, the Bundestag. Should they fail, and if the Christian Democrats do not obtain an outright majority, Ms. Merkel would have to find another partner, which many expect would be the center-left Social Democrats.
The recent surge of the Alternative for Germany, an upstart party with a socially conservative, anti-euro platform, has created additional uncertainty, as it could siphon away support from both the chancellor’s conservatives and the Free Democrats, further weakening their chances of continuing the current government.
Roughly a third of all voters described themselves as undecided just days before the election, one of the tightest elections since reunification in 1990. Polling stations opened Sunday at 8 a.m. and the first exit polls are to be released immediately after they close, at 6 p.m. The country has nearly 62 million registered voters.
The race has been closely watched abroad, given Germany’s leadership role in the Continent’s efforts to shake its crippling debt crisis, chronic unemployment and sluggish growth. The next government in Berlin will also be a major participant in the talks aimed at finalizing an ambitious trans-Atlantic trade agreement between the European Union and the United States.
On Saturday, Ms. Merkel wound up her campaign in her home district around Stralsund, a picturesque medieval port on the Baltic Sea. Feisty and upbeat, the 59-year-old chancellor almost forgot that she was the local candidate as she urged voters to cast their ballots for her and, in the second vote, which is for parties, for her Christian Democrats.
“By putting your cross there, you are doing something that will enable me to continue as your chancellor, which I really want to do,” she told a seafront crowd of hundreds. “Tomorrow is your day.”
“Germany has had four good years” Ms. Merkel added, referring to the country’s robust economy and low unemployment, currently at 6.8 percent. “When we look around in Europe, we know that is anything but automatic.”
Her main challenger, the Social Democrat Peer Steinbrück, 66, who served as finance minister in her government from 2005 to 2009, has sought to cast her carefully weighed decision making as plodding and her coalition with the Free Democrats as crippled by infighting.
“In 28 hours you can get rid of them, you can get rid of the most backward-looking, incapable, loudmouthed German government since reunification,” Mr. Steinbrück told a crowd of several thousand on Saturday in Frankfurt, the country’s financial capital and home to the European Central Bank. He has pledged to close the widening gap between Germany’s rich and poor by raising taxes on top earners and introducing a minimum wage.
The Social Democrats would prefer to form a partnership with the Greens, who also appear poised to make it into Parliament. But with the Social Democrats polling at about 27 percent and the Greens hovering around 10 percent, it would not be enough to challenge a center-right coalition. That would require bringing on a more hard-line party, the Left, a prospect that both the Social Democrats and the Greens have ruled out.
Should Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats seek a coalition with the Social Democrats, the negotiations are likely to be difficult and drawn out. In 2005, when they tried to form a similar coalition, the horse-trading between the parties took two months.
Alison Smale contributed reporting from Stralsund, Germany.
