Friedrich Merz – leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) – is set to become Germany’s next Chancellor.
Some 82.5 percent of voters turned out to cast their ballots in Sunday’s election, according to electoral authorities.
The CDU/CSU conservative alliance secured the most votes with 28.52%.
Meanwhile, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has surged, securing 151 seats and nearly 21% of the vote.
Despite the fact Merz’s conservatives have won and well ahead of rival parties, but they were short of the 30% vote-share they had expected.
Outgoing Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats fell to third place in the election results, polling just 16.4%.
Scholz said the election results were a bitter defeat for this party, and that his party would enter coalition talks with the CDU/CSU without him.
As Germany starts to absorb the results of Sunday’s election; attention will now turn to the formation of the new government.
Forming a coalition is very normal in German politics and if the biggest party can secure a good deal with the rest of the parties, the president will nominate a leader as chancellor. Then there will be a secret ballot to determine the winner.
Today, election winner Friedrich Merz will want to discuss the next steps on the way to forming a government with the leadership of his Christian Democrats party and plans to hold a news conference this afternoon.
However, Merz has said he hopes to have a government in place by Easter in April as Scholz will be in charge of a caretaker government until then.
Merz has ruled out working with the far-right AfD, which won 152 seats, and said he prefers a coalition with one partner.
This then leaves him with the SPD winning 120 seats, the Greens 85 and The Left getting 64 seats which looks very likely to happen.
In a televised roundtable, Merz said, “my absolute priority will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that, step by step, we can really achieve independence from the USA.”
Whereas Alice Weidel said she had missed overnight calls from America, including from tech billionaire Elon Musk.
“When I turned my phone on this morning there were calls from the US, including one from Elon Musk, who wanted to congratulate me personally,” Alice Weidel said.
Merz now faces an enormous task following Sunday’s snap election that was dominated by concerns over immigration, the economy, and the return of Trump.
With all votes counted, world leaders began congratulating Merz on his election win.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said in a post on X that he looked forward “to working with the new government to deepen our already strong relationship, enhance our joint security and deliver growth for both our countries.”
French President Emmanuel Macron said he wanted to work together for a “strong and sovereign Europe.”
