Exit polls have now been published in Germany’s election, suggesting frontrunner Friedrich Merz’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party have come out well in front, as the far-right AfD make large gains.
In polling being watched closely across Europe and in the United States, the CDU/CSU bloc was on course to win first place with 28.5 per cent of the vote, followed by AfD with 20 per cent, marking a record result for the far-right party, public broadcaster ZDF reported.
Incumbent chancellor Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) garnered just 16.5 per cent of the vote, its worst-ever result, the projection showed.
The outcome, which will determine how the country is run for the next four years, is expected to be clear fairly soon after polls closed at 6pm local time on Sunday, but the final official result is expected early on Monday.
German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier called the elections after chancellor Olaf Scholz lost a vote of confidence on 15 January – after losing the support of his coalition when he fired finance minister Christian Lindner amid tensions over economic policy.
But the governing coalition had been falling in popularity long before the dispute within government, with the AfD having surged in federal elections in Thuringia and Saxony last September.
