BERLIN (AP) —
German opposition leader Friedrich Merz's conservatives were on course for a lackluster victory in the country's national election Sunday, while Alternative for Germany nearly doubled its support, the strongest showing for a far-right party since World War II, exit polls showed.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left Social Democrats were headed for a stinging defeat and a likely third-place finish with their worst postwar result in a national parliamentary election, the exit polls for ARD and ZDF public television indicated.
It wasn't immediately clear how easy it will be for Merz to put together a coalition government.
The election took place seven months earlier than originally planned after Scholz's unpopular coalition collapsed in November, three years into a term that was increasingly marred by infighting. There was widespread discontent and not much enthusiasm for any of the candidates.
The exit polls put support for his Union bloc at 28.5-29% and Alternative for Germany, or AfD, at 19.5-20% — roughly double its result from 2021.
They put support for Scholz’s Social Democrats at 16-16.5%, far lower than in the last election. The environmentalist Greens, their remaining partners in the outgoing government, were on 13.5%.
Out of three smaller parties, one — the hard-left Left Party — appeared certain to win seats in parliament with 8.5-9% of the vote. Two other parties, the pro-business Free Democrats and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, were around the threshold of the 5% support needed to win seats.
Whether Merz will need one or two partners to form a coalition will depend on how many parties get into parliament.
“One thing is clear: the Union has won the election,” Carsten Linnemann, the general secretary of Merz’s Christian Democratic Union party. “The new chancellor will be called Friedrich Merz.”
“We have become the second-strongest force,” said AfD's candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel.
The Social Democrats' general secretary, Matthias Miersch, conceded that voters inflicted “a historic defeat” on his party and that Merz had a mandate to form the government. He suggested that the defeat was no surprise after three years of the unpopular government — “this election wasn't lost in the last eight weeks.”
She said that her party is "open for coalition negotations" with Merz's party, and that "otherwise no change of policy is possible in Germany." But Merz has repeatedly and categorically ruled out working with AfD, as have other mainstream parties.
German exit polls are supplemented with pre-election polling to represent people voting by absentee ballot.
The election was dominated by worries about the years-long stagnation of Europe's biggest economy, pressure to curb migration. It took place against a background of growing uncertainty over the future of Ukraine and Europe's alliance with the United States.
Germany is the most populous country in the 27-nation European Union and a leading member of NATO. It has been Ukraine's second-biggest weapons supplier, after the U.S. It will be central to shaping the continent's response to the challenges of the coming years, including the Trump administration's confrontational foreign and trade policy.
More than 59 million people in the nation of 84 million were eligible to elect the 630 members of the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, who will take their seats under the glass dome of Berlin's landmark Reichstag building.
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