A steady stream of new and experienced voters entered the Farinelli elementary school in Munich's trendy Schwabing district on Sunday. 

All of Germany's 88,000 polling stations opened at 8am sharp, with some Germans eager to place their votes early in what is being seen as an historic election for the country. It is the first time in 16 years the country will elect a new chancellor.

The ballots ask Germans to cast two votes, one for a candidate in their constituency and one for a political party, of which there are 47. But only a few parties are expected to make it past the 5 percent threshold to enter parliament.

The winners will make up the 598 seats of Germany's next "Bundestag," or parliament. No single party is expected to win a majority, so the party with the most votes will need to negotiate with smaller parties in order to form a coalition.

That coalition will become the next government and vote for the country's new chancellor to replace long-standing Angela Merkel.

"This is a very important day," said 25-year-old Lena. "We had 16 years the same chancellor and now the cards are on the table."

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The faces might be new, but the parties are not.

Going into Sunday's elections, polls showed the country's oldest party, the left-leaning Social Democrats (SPD) leading with 25 percent of the popular vote, and Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and their even more conservative sister party, Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU), lagging behind at 22 percent.

The Green party is expected to take third place with around 15 percent of the vote, and that makes voters like Lena happy.

"Climate change is definitely one of the biggest issues. We should definitely do more than we are actually doing now," she told CGTN Europe. 

The Greens are polling a good 6 percent more than they did in the 2017 federal elections (8.9 percent).

Their leader Annalena Baerbock is the country's youngest ever candidate for chancellor.

Yet surveys put the SPD's Olaf Scholz, Germany's incumbent vice-Chancellor and federal Finance Minister, as favourite to take over Merkel's job.

Merkel began campaigning with her CDU party's choice for chancellor Armin Laschet only days before the elections to boost his popularity after a number of political gaffes that damaged his ratings.

Laschet also pushed the threat of a left-leaning coalition should the SPD take power, which has helped tip the balance.

Marie, a Munich resident said she saw Sunday's vote as very important for her country.

"All of my life I have voted, but now it is that we could lose our positive position in Europe and the world, and this is what I am afraid of," she told CGTN Europe. 

Merkel has left a lasting legacy at home and abroad, having taken the country through a decade and a half of ups and downs including an economic crisis and a global pandemic. She is also the country's second longest-standing chancellor and the first to leave entirely on her own terms.

But deciding who will follow her to run Europe's most powerful economy could take weeks.

Sunday's results will place one party ahead, but without a majority win, that party will then need to form a coalition. Only then can the next chancellor be chosen. In 2017 that process took six months.