To cheers from his supporters at party headquarters, the SPD leader said it’s clear that voters want him as chancellor, but he still faces months of negotiation and uncertainty before he can make that a reality. A defiant Laschet insisted that he too will try to form a coalition though his party has suffered its worst result ever by plunging below 30%. “We will do everything we can to form a federal government,” he told demoralized supporters.
Olaf Scholz of the Social Democrats inched ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives in an unprecedentedly tight German election which is still to decide who will lead Europe’s biggest economy.
Scholz’s SPD, the front-runner over the final weeks of the campaign, took 25.7% of the vote on Sunday, while the Christian Democrats under Armin Laschet got 24.1%, according to provisional results of the official federal tally. Both men said they aim to head the country’s next government.
