Germany's conservative CDU/CSU alliance led by Friedrich Merz won germany general elections with between 28.5 and 29 percent of the vote, according to first TV exit polls.
Exit polls, issued after voting ended, suggest AfD (Alternative for Germany) – a party under intelligence service surveillance as a suspected extremist organisation – has won around 20% of the vote.
Her name has found its way into a popular slogan of the party’s supporters – ‘Alice for Deutschland’ – after its leader in Thuringia, Bjorn Höcke, was fined last year for using the banned Nazi phrase ‘Alles für Deutschland’, meaning ‘everything for Germany’.
Merz’s CDU has celebrated the demise of the so-called ‘traffic light coalition’ of the Social Democratic Party, Greens and Free Democrats.
Even after nearly passing a bill to toughen immigration measures with the support of the AfD – a move that brought thousands onto the streets in protest – Merz responded to criticism by saying: ‘A right decision doesn’t become wrong just because the wrong people agree to it.’.
