Well, everybody's going to be talking about the SPD meltdown, but as German broadcaster ARD noted, the CDU/CSU achieved its second-worse showing in history. And apparently the lion's share of that goes to Bavaria, where the CSU came in at 41 percent - which for Bavaria is a historical result.

One commentator in the "Elefantenrunde" TV discussion of party heads made a remark about the CDU trying to be the "better FDP" in the final days of the election, i.e. pushing for tax cuts. Which makes sense - as the Dems in the US could tell them (had they the insight), when faced with a policy and a "policy lite", voters will always vote for the real thing.

The fact is that what we're experiencing right now is a top-down disaster. -Paul Krugman