Conservatives, social democrats tied in vote to decide Merkel’s successor
AACHEN/POTSDAM (Reuters) – Germany’s CDU/CSU conservatives and their Social Democrat rivals were tied in Sunday’s national election, an exit poll showed, leaving open which of them will lead the next government as Angela Merkel prepares to stand down after 16 years in power.
The CDU/CSU bloc won 25% of the vote, their weakest result in a post-war federal election and on a par with the center-left Social Democrat (SPD), the poll for broadcaster ARD showed. Other exit polls showed the SPD marginally ahead.
“That hurts,” CDU General Secretary Paul Ziemiak told ARD after publication of the exit polls. Attention will now shift to informal discussions - likely with the Greens, on 15%, and liberal Free Democrats (FDP), on 11% - followed by more formal coalition negotiations , which could take months, leaving
Merkel in charge in a caretaker role.
After a domestic-focused election campaign, Berlin’s allies in Europe and beyond may have to wait for months before they can see whether the new German government is ready to engage on foreign issues to the extent they would like.
Merkel has been in power since 2005 but plans to step down after the election, making the vote an era-changing event to set the future course of Europe’s
largest economy.“We all sense that this is a very important federal election,” Laschet told journalists after voting in his home constituency of Aachen. “It is a federal election that will decide the direction of Germany in coming years, and therefore every vote counts.”
Running against Laschet is Olaf Scholz of the SPD, the finance minister in Merkel’s Right-Left coalition who won all three televised debates between the leading candidates.
Scholz, 63, has seen his party’s lead over the conservatives squeezed to between one and three points in final opinion polls, leaving Laschet with a chance of clinching a narrow victory.
“I hope that as many citizens as possible will go and vote and make a very strong result for the SPD possible and give me the mandate to become the next chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany,” Scholz said after casting a ballot in his own constituency of Potsdam near Berlin.
Scholz told supporters in Potsdam on Saturday that his preferred outcome was for the SPD and Greens to secure a majority to rule alone without a third partner.
Both the conservatives and the FDP reject a European “debt union” and want to ensure that joint European Union borrowing to finance the bloc’s coronavirus recovery package remains separate. The SPD has talked about taking steps toward a fiscal union.