German exit polls give Merz's conservatives the lead and put far right on strongest postwar showing

BERLIN (AP) — Exit polls in Germany's national election Sunday show opposition leader Friedrich Merz’s conservatives leading, with Alternative for Germany heading for the strongest showing for a far-right party since World War II.

The exit polls for ARD and ZDF public television show Chancellor Olaf 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, their remaining partners in the outgoing government after Scholz’s three-party coalition collapsed in November, were on13.5%.

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 government 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.

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.

The top candidates, conservative front-runner Friedrich Merz and current Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats, voted within minutes of each other in different parts of the country on Sunday morning.

More than 59 million people in the nation of 84 million are 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.

This election took place seven months before it was originally planned after center-left Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition collapsed in November, three years into a term that was increasingly marred by infighting. There wass widespread discontent and not much enthusiasm for any of the candidates.