> Any chance that Schroeder or the other SPD leaders
> could come under pressure from the Party's base
> to do a coalition with the Left party rather than
> a grand coalition with the CDU?
-------------------------
Maybe, and that would be good, but I doubt it.
Why is a broad left coalition unlikely? Because Schroeder and the SPD leaders are closer to Merkel and the CDU than they are to Lafontaine and Gysi's Left Party.
The SPD and CDU both favour the continuation of "structural reforms" which would scale back Germany's health, pension, unemployment, and welfare benefits, reduce corporate taxes and regulation, and weaken the unions and collective bargaining. They differ in how much the safety nut should be unravelled, but both parties have this as their goal. The social democrats, in fact, began implementing this program while in office.
That's what led Lafontaine and the Social Democrats' left wing to bolt the SPD and to form the Left Party in alliance with Gysi's Linkspartie, which evolved from the old East German CP. The LP leaders have deep-seated differences with the SPD agenda, and one or the other party would have to effectively abandon their own program in order to go into coalition.
Shroeder and Merkel, not surprisingly, tried to demonstrate they were very different from each other in their appeals to voters, but on the essentials, there seems to be enough agreement between them to force them into a "grand coalition" which could govern along the lines mentioned above. It happened before, in the 60s, when Willi Brandt, I think, was head of the SPD.