And the party, which shares power in six states, and has shared it with the CDU at state level in the past, is hungry for a return to federal government.By contrast, an SPD-Green coalithen, the only one that Mr Steinbrück has said he would accept, has almost no chance of winning a majority.
She knows that she must achieve some black-red entente anyway, because SPD-led states dominate the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, in which the 16 states are represented.
A more typical SPD man than Mr Schröder could have got so mired in the bogs of German federalism (the Bundesrat, the upper house, gives the states a say on most important laws) as to achieve nothing at all.
But the emerging coalition's inner circle which besides Ms Merkel, Mr Stoiber and Mr Müntefering includes Mr Schröder, Peer Steinbrück, the designated SPD finance minister, and Roland Koch, the CDU premier of Hesse seemed to have developed a measure of trust and good working relations.
The stars of the 1966-69 "grand coalition" were Karl Schiller, the Social Democrat (SPD) economics minister, and Franz Josef Strauss, the Christian Social Union (CSU) finance minister, a duo that won the nicknames "Plisch and Plum", from two cheeky dogs in a 19th-century poem by Wilhelm Busch.
Yet the SPD campaigned for more protection for agency work and against US-style labour markets.
To win she shamelessly borrowed policies such as the minimum wage from her Social Democrat (SPD) opponents.
Not everyone had given up on SPD challenger, Peer Steinbrück, just yet.
Australia (confirmed): GJ Bailey (capt), AJ Finch, SE Marsh, SPD Smith, GJ Maxwell, MS Wade, DT Christian, JP Faulkner, NM Coulter-Nile, MG Johnson, JL Pattinson.
But Mrs Merkel has taken it to new extremes of moderation.Peer Steinbrück, who as leader of the Social Democrats (SPD) is her main rival in the elections, parodies her well.
Sounding cranky, Sigmar Gabriel, the party's boss, said that "the SPD is not queuing to be next after Mrs Merkel ruined her previous coalition partner", referring to the FDP.
