”Both the main party’s candidates for chancellor have now said they believe they have a mandate to form Germany’s next government.” - Guardain
LIVE TV coverage in English here— DW Guardian LIVE Feed UPDATED DATA here
The polls have now closed in Germany, where voters have been casting their ballots for a new Parliament, which will ultimately determine who succeeds Chancellor Angela Merkel at the helm of the European Union’s most populous democracy after 16 years in office.
Early exit polls throughout the day have suggested a very tight race between Ms. Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union and the center-left Social Democrats. Most have showed the Social Democrats slightly ahead, but in at least one the Christian Democrats had the edge. A couple had them tied.
The Green party is the most popular among German voters 18 to 29 years old, with perhaps even stronger support among those still too young to cast ballots — sometimes dubbed the “Merkel generation” because they have never known a different leader.
Now that Merkel is stepping down after 16 years in power, many Greens supporters fear that a rare opportunity for change was slipping away. Older voters appear to be sticking with Germany’s traditional parties or throwing support behind the far right in Sunday’s election.
The left-leaning Social Democratic Party (SPD) is narrowly ahead in exit polls published after voting ended in Germany’s federal election, a Forschungsgruppe Wahlen exit poll for CNN affiliate n-tv suggests, but the final result of the closely fought contest remains uncertain. Washington Post
At the Social Democrats’s headquarters, general secretary Lars Klingbeil sounds confident the party’s candidate for chancellor, Olaf Scholz, is on course to succeed Angela Merkel after she steps down after a fourth term in office.
All bets are off on the composition of the next coalition, however, as the results, if they are confirmed, could allosw both the SPD and the Merkel’s conservatice CDU/CSU to try to cobble together a ruling majority since so little divide their scores.
Laschet in particular has signalled he could still try to form a coalition even if the CDU-CSU do not come first, most likely calling on the Greens and the liberal FDP for support. Guardian
Turnout at one polling station was about 78%, the federal election commission has said, two percentage points up on the previous 2017 vote and the highest since 2005 - the year Angela Merkel was first elected chancellor. — Guardian
