Germany’s center-left SPD has claimed victory over outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives in the federal election, and it now intends to build a three-way coalition with the Greens and liberal FDP. Merkel has been Chancellor of Germany since 2005, but SDP leader Olaf Scholz said Germans had voted freeze her conservative party out of government. Provisional results showed that the SPD secured 25.7 percent of the vote— ahead of 24.1 percent for Merkel’s CDU/CSU conservative bloc—while the Greens came in at 14.8 percent and the FDP were on 11.5 percent. “What you see here is a very happy SDP,” Scholz said, according to Reuters. “The voters have very clearly spoken... They strengthened three parties—the Social Democrats, Greens and FDP—and therefore that is the clear mandate the citizens of this country have given.” Merkel’s bloc of conservatives suffered their worst-ever election performance.
