By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
@GettyImages.
The exit polls show opposition leader Friedrich Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party leading the votes with the far-right Alternative for Germany party heading towards the strongest showing of the far-right since World War II.
Merz — a long-time party rival of ex-chancellor Angela Merkel — has vowed a crackdown on irregular immigration. He hopes to win back votes from the AfD and halt its rise, which has stunned many in a country still seeking to atone for its dark Nazi history.
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose three-party coalition collapsed in November, conceded defeat.
The exit polls for ARD and ZDF public television show Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats on track for their worst postwar result in a national parliamentary election and expected to be in third place.
The polls, issued right after the last polling stations closed, put support for Merz’s 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 were at 13.5%.
Merz vowed to move quickly to put together a coalition government. But it wasn’t immediately clear how easy that will be.
Whether Merz will have a majority to form a coalition with Scholz’s Social Democrats or need a second partner as well will depend on how many parties get into parliament. The conservative leader said that “the most important thing is to re-establish a viable government in Germany as quickly as possible.”
“I am aware of the responsibility,” Merz said. “I am also aware of the scale of the task that now lies ahead of us. I approach it with the utmost respect, and I know that it will not be easy.”
“The world out there isn’t waiting for us, and it isn’t waiting for long-drawn-out coalition talks and negotiations,” he told cheering supporters. “We must now become capable of acting quickly again.”
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.