What's going on in Germany right now?

[minionofmidas]

There's no reason whatsoever to believe they might even conceivably win a Federal Election by such a margin anymore. Which is not to say they aren't favourites to win...

[minionofmidas]

Actually the uniform swing map looks awfully like 1983 over here...

Exactly.
Way too many 1983 CDU voters are dead by now, way too few new ones exist. That kinda map is now only possible on a turnout of 70% at the very, very maximum. Probably less.

[minionofmidas]

Two things going on...
a) Polls in Germany tend to overestimate opposition support. Back in the 90's polls were usually good news to the Left, though it didn't go to the extremes we see now.
b) The Union supporters remain highly motivated. The Left is turned off by social cuts, but they'll be back, most of them, when it comes to voting the Lesser Evil in a Federal Election. Just as in 2002.

[minionofmidas]

And it's quite plausible that, superimposing the EU election results on that map, it'd look something like that...

[minionofmidas]

Exactly.
The FDP actually managed to win a district in East Germany in 1990, btw, on the wave of Genscher's popularity in his home area.
Normally, however, the FDP gets only half as many district votes as proportional votes - and polling regularly confirms that half their voters prefer the CDU to the FDP. This was less pronounced than usual in 2002, though.

[minionofmidas]

Or unless they get more districts that what belongs to them by PR, although this doesn´t happen so often.

Actually, it happens quite a lot, especially since 1990, that CDU, and SPD get more districts than their total of seats allocated in PR. The solution is to extend the number of seats in the Bundestag, socalled "Uberhangmandate" (overhang seats).

There is also a way to avoid the change in the number of seats (I honestly don´t remember how). It´s useful in cases where (e.g., bc the constitution doesn´t allow it) you can´t change the number of seats.

This system has it all...

The only way how you can avoid changing the no of seats would be not to award seats to the narrowest winners of that party - this is actually done in Bavaria, though it only ever happened once there.
What's done in most German states is to give additional seats to all the other parties as well (Ausgleichsmandate), so that representation remains strictly proportional.
However, that can't be done in the federal elections because you'd have to adjust between the states as well as between the parties. Now, if the SPD wins all 10 direct seats in, say, Sachsen-Anhalt (as they did in 2002), but should only have 7 (8 in 2002, but 7 wouldn't be impossible if the PDS has a good year), you'd have to expand parliament by almost 50%!
So, in federal elections, nothing of the kind is done.