Angela Merkel has won a fourth term as German Chancellor, but with her party’s lead in parliament cut and the country facing a surge in support for the far right.

Exit polls predicted the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) would become the third-largest party in the national parliament, the Bundestag, as German voters delivered a stinging blow to the traditional parties.

Merkel’s CDU and its sister CSU had their share of the vote slashed. Germany’s oldest party, the SPD, which had been in a “grand coalition” with Merkel, was consigned to opposition.

Addressing her supporters, a subdued Merkel said the result gave her a “mandate” to govern but that the AfD’s success would require “thorough analysis” to understand the concerns of their voters.

SPD leader Martin Schulz said the result was a “bitter disappointment” and the party would return to opposition. He lamented the success of the AfD, adding that it was a watershed moment.

The exit polls showed Merkel’s CDU/CSU group would be the largest in the Bundestag, but with its lead cut to 33.5% of the seats. The SPD fell to 21%, a result met with shock at the party’s headquarters. AfD is predicted to become the first far-right party to win seats in the Bundestag since 1960, with about 13% of seats, according to FORSA polling institute data commissioned by German public broadcaster ZDF.

Addressing her supporters, Merkel pledged to try and understand the concerns of voters who lent their support to the AfD. “There’s a big new challenge for us, and that is the entry of the AfD in the Bundestag,” she said. “We want to win back AfD voters.”

The success of the AfD was declared as a “political earthquake” by Georg Pazderski, the local party leader in Berlin.

Figures show 21.5% of East Germans, including Berlin, voted for the far-right party, while 11% voted for the AfD in the West, according to exit polls done by Infratest Dimap.

Founded in 2013, the AfD has enjoyed a surge of support for its anti-immigration stance and its opposition to Merkel’s decision to open the country’s borders to over a million migrants, mainly those fleeing violence and persecution from the Middle East.

The AfD, which has also been accused of Islamophobia, garnered staunch support in east Germany where it became the second largest party after the CDU.

“For the first time, we have a conservative party right beside our Christian Democrats and this is because they moved more and more to the left and we moved into the vacuum,” Pazderski told CNN

“It’s a good day for democracy for Germany and for Europe.”

Meanwhile, Alice Weidel, a leading AfD politician, told supporters she will keep her promise to call for a committee to investigate Merkel’s decision to allow more than a million refugees into the country in 2015.

She had repeatedly claimed that Merkel should be “punished” for her decisions during the refugee crisis.

“People have given us their trust and we will keep our promise,” she said.

With the SPD refusing to rejoin a coalition and no party willing to work with the AfD, it leaves Merkel with few options for a coalition.

The exit polls would suggest that Merkel may be forced to make a deal with the Green Party and FDP, to create a so-called “Jamaican coalition” — with the green and and yellow of the two parties combining with the black of the CDU to resemble the flag of Jamaica.

The pro-business FDP are expected to take 10% of seats with the Greens one percentage point behind on nine.

Coalition talks are unlikely to begin in earnest until final results have been announced on Monday.

To form a government, the parties involved must have a combined total of at least 50% of the seats in parliament.

There are likely to be several coalition options, and plenty of disagreement between the parties before they reach a deal.

Parliament will reconvene on October 24 with the new government in place.</s>BERLIN — For Germany, this was an election of firsts.

In yesterday’s federal elections, German Chancellor Angela Merkel won another term, clinching her continuance as the leader of Germany after 12 years in power.

But Merkel’s expected victory was overshadowed by disappointing numbers for her party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and by a surge for the insurgent and xenophobic far-right party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), which carried 13.5 percent of the vote.

The election’s surprising outcome ensures that, although it will be Merkel’s fourth term, it will hardly be politics as usual. It’s the first time since 1949 that a far-right party has entered the parliament. And it’s the first time the Bundestag will have six parties jockeying for power, up from five, making coalition-building more difficult and less stable.

And since Germany’s two major parties hemorrhaged votes to the four smaller parties — both the CDU and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) gave their worst performances since World War II — Merkel will be the first chancellor forced to seek a three-party coalition in order to form a majority government, likely with the pro-business FDP and the Greens.

That’s bad news for those who were hoping a post-election Germany could play a stronger role in leading the way toward a more integrated Europe. With the challenge of forming a government — and the rise of the far-right AfD — Merkel and company will be preoccupied at home.

While the big parties bemoan their drop in support, the outcome could actually rejuvenate German politics, which had over the past decade ossified around a centrism dominated by the CDU and the SDP, leaving many voters feeling left out.

“The U.S. and Germany have opposite problems in terms of how their democracies function,” said Hans Kundnani, a senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “The U.S. has an incredibly polarized democracy, and it threatens to tell itself apart. And Germany has the opposite problem, which is too much consensus over the past 10 years.”

The election was certainly a blow to the country’s historically centrist post-war politics. In 2013, the AfD received 4.7 percent of the vote, just missing the 5 percent threshold to required to enter parliament. But since the migrant crisis crescendoed in 2015, spurring the rise of anti-immigrant far-right parties across Europe, the AfD transformed into an undeniable force, winning local elections across the country in 2016. (Though this year AfD did best where immigrants are fewest.)

Yesterday’s result was only slightly above expectations — the AfD was expected to receive somewhere between 8 and 12 percent of the vote — but it marks a hard reality that can no longer be dismissed. That the AfD clocked in at over 10 percent is a “stunning blow” to the centrists, one campaign official from the SPD told FP. The AfD is expected to gain 87 parliamentary seats out of around 600.

“The AfD presence in the Bundestag shatters any illusions that some people had before the election that Germany was somehow an exception, that it was immune to the rise of populism,” said Kundnani.

At the SPD’s Berlin election party, the mood was grim as the results came in. The SPD came in second place with 20.7 percent of the votes — its lowest performance of the post-war order. Solemn faces and muted applause greeted SPD leader and Merkel’s primary opponent Martin Schulz when he came to the stage to make a speech after the results. “It’s a difficult and bitter day for social democrats in Germany,” Schulz told a crowd of supporters and reporters. “We haven’t reached our objective.”

One senior SPD official lamented his party simply couldn’t mobilize their base, which has hemorrhaged support in recent months as they struggled to rally around a common vision. When asked to rank the election results for his party after Schulz’s speech, he told FP: “On a scale of one to ten, this was a negative ten.”

While Merkel coasted into victory, the mood for her party wasn’t victorious. The CDU dropped from 41.5 percent in her 2013 victory to 32.5 percent. “Of course we would have preferred a better result,” she told her supporters. It was the CDU’s worst result since 1949.

Yet the electoral rebuke could hide a silver lining.

Schulz said the SPD would not take part in any new coalition with Merkel, meaning that the grand coalition is no more. Many Germans are likely to see that as a step in the right direction. The grand coalition became a centrist lodestone on mainstream German politics, pulling its two largest forces and traditionally ideological competitors into a single undifferentiated block.

That means voters have increasingly felt they had no real options to choose from, contributing to the sense of widespread voter disenfranchisement. The rise of the AfD, and the exodus of voters from the grand coalition to the smaller parties, is thus in part due to the grand coalition. Its demise may revive diversity and debate within German politics, Kundani said.

It may also, ironically, revive the SPD in the years to come. In the coalition, the SPD could only play second fiddle to the CDU and, since it was governing alongside a traditional rival, it was unable to articulate a platform meaningfully different than Merkel’s. Martin Schulz was essentially running as an incumbent — but a less prominent and less successful one.

In addition, an SPD in opposition, rather than government, ensures that the AfD won’t be leader of the opposition — for months a very real possibility that had Germans and indeed the Bundestag itself worried sick. The party that leads the opposition has the right to speak second after the chancellor speaks in parliament, granting it significant influence on setting the tone and agenda for parliamentary dialogue. The leader of the opposition traditionally also chairs the powerful budget committee. Many in the Bundestag are breathing a sigh of relief that it is the SPD, not the AfD, that will wield these powers.

Even without that mantle, the AfD was jubilant.

“This is a great night. We did it. We are in parliament,” AfD leader Alexander Gauland told supporters. “We will change this country…We will hunt Merkel, and reclaim our country and our people,” he said.

Frauke Petry, co-chair of AfD and its one-time star, shocked her far-right friends on Monday by announcing she would not be joining the AfD in parliament. Frauke butted heads with other party leaders in April, when she was accused of trying to move the party “mainstream” after suggesting AfD should reject “racist, anti-Semitic … and nationalist ideologies.”

Meanwhile, the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) will enter the parliament once again, after being shut out in an upset in 2013. It nearly doubled its numbers from the 2013 elections, gaining 10.5 percent of the vote. The Green Party was happy with the results as well. Set to get 9.4 percent share of seats in the Bundestag, that marks about a half-percent improvement over 2013. During their election party yesterday evening, they cheered and whistled several times throughout the night as they saw their numbers exceeding their expectations.

With the SPD declaring itself out of the running, Merkel will likely turn to the FDP and the Greens to form a new government in a so-called Jamaica coalition, referring to the black, yellow, and green that represent each of the constituent parties. That’s more cause for celebration for the two smaller parties who have been shut out of governing coalitions in recent elections.

While the AfD won’t have any direct affect on law-making, it will likely make political rhetoric more adversarial, as when Gauland swore last night to “hunt” Merkel. But that may not be all bad. Kundnani thinks that may help bring real debate back to German politics.

“In that way, I kind of welcome the entry of the AfD into the Bundestag, although I disagree with their policies,” said Kundnani. “The fact that they have brought non-voters back into the German democracy is a good thing.”

Still, Germany must come to terms with a far-right party taking root in its politics. Even for those who expected an AfD surge, the mood was bleak. As one CDU official told FP, “I’m not surprised by their strength but much more by our weakness.”</s>German Chancellor, Angela Merkel’s has won the mandate to form Germany’s central government for a fourth consecutive term in office.

The polls showed that for the first time in more than 50 years, a far-right party will be represented in the German parliament.

Merkel’s conservative bloc – her Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU) – won 32.5 percent of the vote, making them by far the largest parliamentary group, according to an exit poll for the broadcaster ARD.

However, the CSU’s vote was down by about 9.5 per cent compared with 41.5 percent in the 2013 election.

Their closest rivals, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD), slumped to 20.0 percent – a new post-war low.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) stunned the establishment by finishing third and entering parliament for the first time with 13.5 percent.

Merkel, Europe’s longest-serving leader, joins the late Helmut Kohl, her mentor who reunified Germany, and Konrad Adenauer, who led Germany’s rebirth after World War Two, as the only post-war chancellors to win four national elections.

She must now form a coalition government – an arduous process that could take months as all potential partners are unsure whether they really want to share power with her.</s>German Chancellor and CDU Party leader Angela Merkel casts her vote at a polling station on Sunday in Berlin during general elections (AFP photo)

BERLIN — Germans voted on Sunday in a general election expected to hand Chancellor Angela Merkel a fourth term while the hard-right nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party was expected to make history by winning its first seats in parliament.

Europe’s most powerful woman appears all but assured of winning another term, matching the 16-year reign of her mentor Helmut Kohl.

Surveys suggest her conservative CDU/CSU alliance has a double-digit lead over its nearest rivals, the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Martin Schulz.

Polling stations in Europe’s top economy will close at 1600 GMT, with exit polls due out immediately afterwards.

With four other parties predicted to clear the 5-per cent threshold to enter the Bundestag, the highest number since the 1950s, it could take months of coalition wrangling before the next government takes shape.

But mainstream parties have already ruled out talking to the anti-Islam, anti-immigration AfD, which is polling at 11 to 13 per cent and could emerge as Germany’s third-strongest party.

Alarmed by the prospect of what Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel branded “real Nazis” entering the Bundestag for the first time since World War II, politicians used their final days of campaigning to urge voters to reject the AfD.

“This Alternative for Germany is no alternative. They are a shame for our nation,” former European Parliament chief Schulz told a rally on Friday.

The latest surveys put support for Merkel’s conservative block at 34-36 per cent, with the SPD trailing at 21-22 per cent — which would translate into a historic low for the party.

Despite bracing for a drubbing, Schulz was all smiles as he and his wife cast their ballot in his western hometown of Wuerselen.

Preliminary figures indicated that turnout was up compared to the 2013 election in major cities including Berlin, Munich and Hamburg.

Merkel, 63, whose campaign events were regularly disrupted by jeering AfD supporters, said at her final stump speech in the southern city of Munich that “the future of Germany will definitely not be built with whistles and hollers”.

Observers say a strong showing by the AfD, which has capitalised on anger over the influx of a million migrants and refugees since 2015, would hit Germany like a bombshell.

“If the AfD becomes the leading opposition party, they will challenge key themes,” said Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. “It will very much change the tone of debate in parliament.”

Aside from the populist noise, the past two months of campaigning have been widely criticised as lacklustre, with few hot-button issues dividing the main contenders.

Commentators say Merkel’s reassuring message of stability and prosperity has resonated in greying Germany, where more than half of the 61 million voters are aged 52 or older.

Schulz, on the other hand, has struggled to gain traction with his calls for a more socially just Germany at a time when the economy is humming and employment is at a record low.

The SPD has also found it hard to shine after four years as the junior partner in Merkel’s left-right “grand coalition”, marked by broad agreement on major topics, from foreign policy to migration.

In the final stretch, the more outspoken Schulz told voters to reject Merkel’s “sleeping-pill politics” and vote against “another four years of stagnation and lethargy”.

Germany’s best-selling daily Bild at the weekend said 61-year-old Schulz found his voice as he neared the finish line, and praised him for “fighting until the end”.

“Germany doesn’t just need a chancellor. It also needs an opposition leader. Schulz has started to sound like one,” the newspaper wrote.

The CDU and the SPD have signalled they are not keen to continue their loveless marriage, and many rank-and-file SPD members believe the traditional working-class party would benefit from a stint in opposition to rekindle its fighting spirit.

This would leave the presumed winner Merkel in need of new coalition partners — possibly the liberal and pro-business Free Democrats, who are hoping for a comeback after crashing out of parliament four years ago.

Another potential partner would be the ecologist and left-leaning Greens Party, which, however, starkly differs with the FDP on issues from climate change to migration policy.

Pundits have pointed out that a significant number of voters remained undecided until the last minute, suggesting the final outcome could throw up some surprises depending on turnout.

In the western city of Frankfurt, 66-year-old Harald said he was still unsure who to vote for as he headed home from his night shift as a security guard in the leafy Westend suburb.

“I will make up my mind once I’m in the polling booth. You can forget about the AfD,” he told AFP.</s>BERLIN | German Chancellor Angela Merkel defended an election campaign that left her conservative bloc in first place but significantly weakened as she embarked Monday on what could be a lengthy quest to form a new government.

Merkel said the success of a nationalist, anti-migrant party that finished third in Sunday’s election won’t influence her foreign, European and refugee policies. She once more defended her decision to let in nearly 900,000 migrants and refugees, saying Germany wouldn’t again face the humanitarian crisis that let to it.

“I can’t see what we should have done differently,” she said. “I thought this campaign through well.”

The center-left Social Democratic Party has been Merkel’s partners in a “grand coalition” since 2013. The party finished second, but leader Martin Schulz said its tremendously weak showing would require the Social Democrats “to be a strong opposition” going forward.

Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, has no tradition of minority governments, and Merkel has made clear she doesn’t want to go that route. It would be a tall order anyway, as her bloc only holds 246 of the new parliament’s 709 seats.

The most politically plausible option so far is a three-way coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats and the traditionally left-leaning Greens. The combination, called a “Jamaica” coalition because the parties’ colors match those of the Caribbean nation’s flag, hasn’t been tried before in a national government.

Merkel said Monday she will seek talks with the two parties, as well as with the Social Democrats. There’s unlikely to be much movement before a state election Oct. 15 in Lower Saxony, one of Germany’s most populous states.

“It is important that Germany gets a good, stable government,” she told reporters at a subdued news conference in Berlin. “All parties … have a responsibility that we get a stable government.”

Merkel will have to bridge differences between the Free Democrats and Greens. The parties have a tradition of mutual suspicion as well as differences on issues including environmental policy, European financial policy and the auto industry’s future.

Merkel also faces pressure from conservative allies for an effective response to the third-place finish of the nationalist Alternative for Germany, or AfD. The party won entrance to parliament for the first time Sunday after a campaign that centered on harsh criticism of Merkel and the migrant influx.

Still, the election results left no other party or bloc besides Merkel’s able to lead a new government, and Merkel herself lacks an obvious internal challenger. She dismissed the idea of seeking a new election.

Merkel’s campaign focused squarely on her 12 years’ experience leading Germany through a period of international turmoil, but offered few ideas for the future.

Oskar Niedermayer, a political science professor at Berlin’s Free University, said he “wouldn’t want to bet” on a Jamaica coalition coming together, saying the parties appear so far apart in many areas that solid compromises are hard to imagine.

If the talks fail, he told n-tv television, the Social Democrats will face the question: “Do they want to take the blame for early elections or will they let themselves be forced into a coalition?””

The talks “will certainly be very complicated and very difficult,” said the Greens’ co-leader, Katrin Goering-Eckardt. “We will negotiate with great responsibility and great seriousness.”

Merkel’s outgoing government took office nearly three months after Germany’s 2013 election, a post-World War II record that could now be exceeded. Merkel said she won’t be able to tell fellow European Union leaders at a summit this week when her new administration will be in place.

She noted, though, that the Netherlands still hasn’t formed a new government after an election in mid-March.

“I’m not the most urgent case yet,” Merkel said. “I will assure my colleagues that Germany will act responsibly in the phase in which we are in transition.”</s>The German election takes place this Sunday, with Chancellor Angela Merkel heavy favourite to defend her position against Martin Schulz for a fourth term in power.

Polls currently show that Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party - with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU) - will be the largest party after the Bundestag election on 24 September, but they will fall short of a majority.

This is common in Germany, and so the resulting parliament is in part determined by how the smaller parties perform, and which coalition possibilities will be born.

How does the German voting system work?

Each person casts two votes in the Bundestag election, to allocate a total of 598 seats. Half of these are to elect a local MP by constituency, in a first-past-the-post fashion.

The remaining 299 votes are elected via party lists, allocated near-proportionately to the party vote share in each of Germany’s 16 federal states.

To be included in this seat allocation process, a party must achieve five per cent of the national vote.

This second round of seat allocation also means that the total number of MPs can be higher, with politicians elected in "overhang seats" in order to balance the state- and constituency-level votes. The most recent parliament had 32 overhang seats, taking the total up to 631 MPs.

This allows voters to represent their interests locally through their chosen representative, as well as nationally in the party they feel will be strongest in the Bundestag.

In the end, the seat share for each party ends up very similar to their vote share - unlike the system used in the UK's parliamentary elections.

So who will win the German election and when will we know the results?

Merkel's CDU is looking most likely to win the most seats in the Bundestag - for the fourth election in a row.

The SPD, led by former President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz, is in second place in the polls - securing around a quarter of the vote.

The AfD - the far-right Alternative for Germany party - had enjoyed a slight rise in the polls in 2016 but have since collapsed into in-fighting and unpopularity.

In reality, the CDU will have to seek a coalition agreement with the SPD or one of the other minor parties to form a government.

We should know who has won the election by 6pm BST this Sunday, when voting ends and the exit poll is released, although it won't be several more weeks until a coalition government is officially agreed.

The return of the far-right

A late surge in support has propelled the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party into third place in the opinion polls with just days to go before the ballot.

Last time around the party, fighting in it's first federal election, failed to win a constituency outright and fell just short of the five per cent required in order to secure MPs via the secondary proportional representation stage of the election.

The rise of the AfD

This time however they seem guaranteed to win representation in the Bundestag with the latest polling average putting them at slightly over 10 per cent. YouGov's Multilevel Regression with Poststratification model puts them on 12 per cent.

Were the AfD to secure a third place finish they could find themselves becoming the main opposition party in Germany if Merkel's CDU/CSU party decide to extend their Grand Coalition with the SPD.

The centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) has been in coalition with centre-right CDU in this current government, as well as in Merkel's first term. These two parties are Germany’s biggest, leading to a union dubbed the "Grand Coalition".

The polls are currently suggesting that Germans are content with their current government, which means a Grand Coalition could happen for a third time in just four elections.

Another option is a Black-Yellow coalition, consisting of Merkel's CDU party propped up by the smaller Free Democratic Party (FDP). This would take Merkel over the target needed for a majority, and was the option the party opted for in 2009-2013.

The only situation that poses a risk to Merkel’s leadership is a left-wing "Red-Red-Green" coalition, led by the SPD's Martin Schulz. For this, he would have to gather enough seats together alongside the Linke (Left) and Grüne (Greens) parties.

What do the parties stand for? The main parties standing in the election are as follows:
• Christian Democrats (CDU): The leading party in Germany, headed by Angela Merkel. The centre-right group - made up of the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) - they have employment, tax cuts and ongoing public investment at the forefront of their manifesto.
• Social Democrats (SPD): Led by Martin Schulz, the centre-left are vying to make another Grand Coalition to remain in government. The party polled well following the election of their new leader, but then suffered once again in regional polls. The SPD is a traditionally working class party, pledging investment in education and infrastructure, funded by higher taxes for the rich.
• Left (Linke): Led by Sahra Wagenknecht and loosely descended from the East German communists. This small party, often used as a protest vote, is campaigning for a rise in national minimum wage, a rejection of military missions abroad and the dissolution of NATO.
• Green (Grüne): Led by co-chairs Katrin Göring-Eckardt and Cem Özdemir, this party could be the coalition kingmakers. They rely on educated, urban citizens, focusing on the environment, taxes and social policies.
• Free Democratic Party (FDP): Led by Christian Lindner, the party was Merkel's junior coalition party in her second term. It failed to reach five per cent of the vote to allow another coalition in 2013. The party campaigns for tax cuts and to remain in financial markets - particularly within the EU.
• Alternative for Germany (AfD): A right-wing populist party lead by Alice Weidel and Alexander Gauland. The party's hardline anti-EU, anti-immigration views have attracted voters from almost all of the other parties, especially among lower income households. What are the betting odds for the German Bundestag election? Political pollsters have taken a beating recently after failing to predict a British Hung Parliament in 2017, a Leave vote last summer and a Donald Trump victory in November. For those who have lost faith in polling, there is another way of predicting electoral outcomes: ask people who are prepared to put their money where their mouth is. Many now believe that political betting markets can better predict elections, relying on the wisdom of a crowd of punters to sort and weigh all the probabilities. Coral's latest odds for the election have Mrs Merkel as most likely to continue as Chancellor after the election. The latest odds for the party to emerge with the most seats are: Our poll tracker takes in national polls from a range of German pollsters: INSA, Infratest Dimap, Emnid, Forsa, Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, Allensbach and IPSOS. Their individual polls, while of different sample sizes, use nationally representative samples. Our seat share projection is based on the average of the last eight polls, excluding any parties that are polling at under five per cent, as the German proportional top-up system does.</s>Chancellor Angela Merkel is in position to rule for a fourth term, according to early exit polls in Germany's national election, which also saw voters send the right-wing Alternative for Germany party (AfD) to Germany's parliament, the Bundestag.

German media characterized the results of Sunday's vote as a major shift. Der Spiegel reports, AfD is the "first overtly right-wing party to win seats in the country's federal parliament in over half a century."

With around 33 percent of the vote, Merkel's Christian Democratic Union party came in first in Sunday's vote, but it was its worst showing since 1949.

"Of course we would have preferred a better result," Merkel said, according to The Associated Press. But she observed that her party has been in power for the past dozen years, the last four of which have been "extremely challenging."

The CDU is projected to hold 218 seats out of the Bundestag's 631 total.

Merkel's outgoing coalition partner, the Social Democrats, received just 20 percent of the vote, its worst showing ever. But it was enough for a second place result of 138 seats in parliament, according to early results.

"Today is a difficult and bitter day," said SPD leader Martin Schulz, who had hoped to take the chancellorship from Merkel. Schulz announced that he will not partner in another grand coalition and thathis party will go into opposition.

The so-called Jamaica coalition, which would see Merkel ruling together with the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats, is her likeliest path toward a majority in parliament. The coalition is so named because the parties' colors of green, yellow and black mirror the Jamaican flag.

The AfD came in third Sunday, with early results showing it received more than 13 percent of the vote. The xenophobic party ran on an anti-immigrant platform with an emphasis on closing Germany's borders to migrants. It had been fiercely opposed to Merkel's recent welcoming of large numbers of refugees.

In the runup to the election, NPR's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson reports German voters were inundated with campaign posters, including ones from the anti-Muslim AfD party with the blunt slogan: "Burkas? We prefer bikinis."

AfD's co-leader Alexander Gauland vowed Sunday that the party would "change this country," promising to pursue Germany's established parties. "We will hunt Ms. Merkel. We will bring back our nation," Gauland said.

The AfD is expected to hold some 87 seats in parliament.

Merkel told supporters Sunday that "we want to win back AfD voters" by solving the country's problems and addressing their concerns, reports AP. She said Germany has to take the fears of its people seriously.

The final election results are expected early Monday, German time, but are not expected to deviate greatly from Sunday's projections.</s>Angela Merkel has won a fourth term as German Chancellor, but with her party’s lead in parliament cut and the country facing a surge in support for the far right.

Exit polls predicted the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) would become the third-largest group in the national parliament, the Bundestag, as German voters delivered a stinging blow to the traditional parties.

Merkel’s center-right CDU and its sister CSU had their share of the vote slashed. Germany’s oldest party, the center-left SPD, which had been in a “grand coalition” with Merkel, was consigned to opposition.

Addressing her supporters, a subdued Merkel said the result gave her a “mandate” to govern but that the AfD’s success would require “thorough analysis” to understand the concerns of their voters.

SPD leader Martin Schulz said the result was a “bitter disappointment” and the party would return to opposition.

The exit polls showed Merkel’s CDU/CSU group would be the largest in the Bundestag, but with its lead cut to 33.5% of the seats, down from 41.5%. The SPD fell to 21% from 25.7%, a result met with shock at the party’s headquarters.

The AfD, founded only four years ago, became the first far-right party to enter the Bundestag since 1960, with a seat projection of 13%, according to FORSA polling institute data commissioned by German public broadcaster ZDF.

Addressing her supporters, Merkel pledged to try and understand the concerns of voters who lent their support to the AfD. “There’s a big new challenge for us, and that is the entry of the AfD in the Bundestag,” she said. “We want to win back AfD voters.”

Licking its wounds, the SPD decided against continuing in government. During the campaign, Schulz found it hard to mount an effective opposition to Merkel, as his party had been inextricably linked to her policy decisions. More symbolically, had the SPD remained in coalition, the AfD would have been the largest opposition party.

The AfD’s local party leader in Berlin, Georg Pazderski, declared its success a “political earthquake.”

Founded in 2013, the AfD rose to prominence on the back of an anti-immigration stance and its opposition to Merkel’s decision to open the country’s borders to over a million migrants, mainly those fleeing violence and persecution from the Middle East. The party’s opponents say it has stoked Islamophobia in Germany.

The AfD polled particularly strongly in East Germany, which includes Berlin, attracting 21.5% of the vote, according to exit polling conducted by by Infratest Dimap. In the West, it scored about 11%, the projections said. The results put the AfD on course to become the second largest party in the East, after the CDU.

“For the first time, we have a conservative party right beside our Christian Democrats and this is because they moved more and more to the left and we moved into the vacuum,” Pazderski told CNN.

“It’s a good day for democracy for Germany and for Europe.”

Alice Weidel, a leading AfD figure, told supporters she would keep her promise to call for a committee to investigate Merkel’s decision to allow more than a million refugees into the country in 2015.

She had repeatedly claimed that Merkel should be “punished” for her decisions during the refugee crisis. “People have given us their trust and we will keep our promise,” she said.

There were protests outside the party’s headquarters in Berlin after the provisional results came through on Sunday. Protesters chanted “Nazis out” and sang “say it loud, say it clear, refugees are welcome here.”

The European Jewish Congress called on the major parties to shun the AfD in parliament. “We trust that centrist parties in the Bundestag will ensure that the AfD has no representation in the coming governing coalition,” Dr. Moshe Kantor, President of the EJC, said.

“Some of the positions it has espoused during the election campaign display alarming levels of intolerance not seen in Germany for many decades and which are, of course, of great concerns to German and European Jews.”

With the SPD refusing to rejoin government and no party willing to work with the AfD, the result leaves Merkel with few options for a coalition.

Merkel may be forced to make a deal with the Green Party and FDP, to create a so-called “Jamaican coalition” — with the green and and yellow of the two parties combining with the black of the CDU to resemble the flag of Jamaica.

The pro-business FDP are expected to take 10% of seats with the Greens one percentage point behind on nine.

Coalition talks are unlikely to begin in earnest until final results have been announced on Monday.

To form a government, the parties involved must have a combined total of at least 50% of the seats in parliament. There are likely to be several coalition options, and plenty of disagreement between the parties before they reach a deal.

The Bundestag is due reconvene on October 24 with the new government in place.</s>BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives beat their rivals on Sunday to win her a fourth term in an election that will also bring a far-right party into Germany’s parliament for the first time in more than half a century, exit polls showed.</s>
• Angela Merkel is on track to secure a minority victory over her rivals
• The far-right, anti-immigrant AfD is posed to form the opposition
• Angela Merkel and Martin Schulz will likely form a ‘grand coalition’ The latest election polls from Germany show that Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) are in the strong lead ahead of Martin Schulz's Social Democrats (SPD). The polls also suggest that incumbent Chancellor will be forced to strike a coalition deal with the SPD, or a potential three-way alliance between the CDU/CSU, Greens and liberal Free Democrats (FDP). One party to look out for, is the controversial AdF which has grown in support in the run up to the election. Here are all the latest live updates, polls and campaign news as Germany elects its next government in the federal election. (All times BST)

Ron Nehring, a former US National Spokesman who is currently at the CDU headquarters in Germany, thinks that the German left will be extremely disappointed with the election results. He said in a tweet: “I get the sense the left in Germany is heading to a crushing defeat, extremely poor showing in today's election. First results in 20 mins.” 4.40pm: A 5 per cent AfD victory could be enough of a success for right-wing party Mathieu von Rohr, deputy head of the Der Spiegel Foreign desk, thinks that entering the Bundestag will be enough of a victory to cause and upset in Germany. He tweeted: “What should be seen as a success for AfD? Need 5% to enter Bundestag. Polls predict 10%+ which would be big. 15%+ would be an upset.”

4.30pm: Exit polls out in just 30 minutes The first round of exit polls are expected to be released in just 30 minutes. The final ballot count will not be out until 2am, but the exit polls are known to be extremely reliable in the German elections. By 5.30pm, a mix of exit polls and preliminary ballot counts should give a clearer picture of the results. FIND OUT HOW TO WATCH THE ELECTION RESULTS LIVE ONLINE 4.20pm: AfD could be in a position of power if it enters the Bundestag Melinda Crane, the chief political correspondent at DW, explained how the AfD ganging parliamentary seats would put it in a position of power. “One of the things we’re going to be watching is not only the percentage of seats, but also will the AfD then come in as a strong third party, because that means potentially if the two main parties – the SPD, the Social Democrats and the CDU and Angela Merkel’s Conservatives – were once again o govern in a grand coalition, the AfD would become the leader of the opposition. “That carries a number of perquisites, including for example the right for open debate in the Bundestag when it’s about the budget. “That is a powerful position and it will be a powerful platform for discourse that may trouble many German citizens. “As you know, we’ve seen the threshold on what is acceptable political discourse here in Germany.”

The are the latest opinion polls collected by Infratest dime: 4pm: Election turn out slips with one hour to go A Federal Returning Officer confirmed today that by 1pm, only 41.4 per cent of the electorate cast their election ballot. "It has perhaps never been as clear that the elections are about the future of democracy and Europe," the Officer wrote in newspaper Bild am Sonntag. "If you don't vote, others decide." More than 60 million Germans are eligible to vote in the federal elections. The largest group of voters is older and born in Germany to German parents, predominantly in the range of 70 and older – 20.7 per cent of the electorate according to theFederal Office of Statistics. About 10.4 per cent of the voters are estimated to have a “migrant background” and 51.5 per cent of German voters are women.

Christian Odendahl tweeted: “As elsewhere, I think this time around the relatively high turnout will benefit the populists in Germany.” The German Chancellor cast her ballot at a polling station in a school in Berlin's Mitte district. in a bod to secure her fourth term in office. Markus Putzel, an election volunteer at the Berlin polling station told CNN that the turnout is “quite high” there. It's a bit like the German Bundesliga," he said. "You know that Bayern Munich will always be the champion, but it is exciting to see who will come second." 3.30pm: Angela Merkel still in the lead with two hours to go A number of polls show that Mrs Merkel’s CDU/CSU is still in the lead for victory. A Pollytix election aggregator predicts that the Conservative’s will secure 36.1 per cent of the vote. based on the average of 21 different pollsters. The SPD are in second place with 22.2 per cent of the vote, and the AfD are looking to score 10.6 per cent of the vote.

2pm: Election turnout comparable to 2013 as Germans head to the polls The election turnout this year is at least two per cent higher than 2013, according to Christian Odendahl, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform. Mr Odendahl tweeted: “Turnout seems to be higher than 2013 in #BTW2017. Might benefit #AfD (former non-voters) rather than major parties (anti-AfD vote). “Turnout in Munich so far: 57% vs. 44% in 2013. “Lowest turnout in a German federal election was in 2009: 70.8%. Highest in 1972: 91.1%. “City of Koeln reports 2 percentage points higher turnout than in 2013, a 1 pm. CLICK HERE TO READ OUR PREVIOUS GERMAN ELECTION LIVE UPDATES
Voters in Germany go to the polls to elect members of the Bundestag. Chancellor Angela Merkel of the Christian Democratic Union is widely expected to win a fourth term in office.