Vote on Merkel successor

BERLIN: Germans have gone to the polls in a national election too close to call, with the centre-left Social Democrats mounting a strong challenge to retiring Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives. Merkel has been in power since 2005 but plans to step down after the election.

A fractured electorate means that after the election, leading parties will sound each other out before embarking on more formal coalition negotiations that could take months.

Final opinion polls gave the Social Democrats a narrow lead, but the conservatives have reduced the gap in recent days.