German elections 2017: Angela Merkel wins fourth term but AfD makes gains – as it happened

• Angela Merkel is set for a fourth term as Germany’s chancellor after her centre right CDU/CSU won a projected 33% of the vote in federal elections, making it the largest party in the Bundestag with an estimated 218 seats.
• The Christian Democrats’ score, sharply down on the 41% of the vote it collected in the previous 2013 elections, was widely seen as disappointing and is likely to leave Merkel diminished on the domestic political stage.
• Her main rivals (and outgoing coalition partners), Martin Schulz’s Social Democrat SPD, crashed to just over 20% and a projected 138 seats. Within an hour of the first exit poll, Schulz confirmed statements by other senior party figures that the SPD would not renew its “grand coalition” with the CDU but head into opposition.
• The far-right, anti-immigration AfD made a historic breakthrough, winning 13.5% of the vote and a projected 87 seats and becoming the first overtly nationalist party to sit in the Bundestag in 60 years. The party’s performance marks a major shift in Germany’s postwar politics that is likely to produce a very different tone and dynamic inside the Bundestag.
• The SPD’s decision to become the official parliamentary opposition leaves the only feasible coalition for Merkel a three-party tie up between the CDU/CSU, the pro-business FDP party who scored 10%, and the Greens, who won 9%: the so-called black-yellow-green Jamaica coalition, which has worked at state level but never been tried in federal government. This could prove tricky to negotiate.
• Merkel said in her post-election speech that the CDU had hoped for a better result but had faced – referring to the 2015 migrant crisis – an “extraordinary challenge” and had still managed to remain Germany’s largest party. She pledged to listen to AfD voters and win back those she could with “good politics”.
• The AfD promised “constructive opposition” in parliament but the Greens have already complained that “Nazis have returned to parliament”.
• During the traditional televised leaders’ debate, Schulz said the EU and the new German government should “not cede anything” to Britain over Brexit, including the two-year transition period Theresa May said she wants, and the FDP’s Christian Lindner dealt a blow to French president Emmanuel Macron’s hopes for eurozone reform, confirming that the party was opposed to fiscal transfers within the zone.
  

This is important for French president Emmanuel Macron’s hopes for eurozone reform, including a eurozone budget, finance minister and transfers: the pro-business FDP party, Merkel’s likely coalition partner along with the Greens, will not play ball.

SPD leader Martin Schulz has said the EU Germany’s new government – of which, at present, he does not intend to be a part – “must not cede any more ground to Britain” in the Brexit negotiations and should not allow the two-year transition period Theresa may said she wanted in her Florence speech on Friday.

“Theresa May is gambling in these talks in an attempt to strengthen her domestic political position,” the SDP leader said. “We cannot give ground. The EU is a community of law and it has certain rules that must be observed.”

Concluding the debate, Merkel, asked whether she thought there would be a coalition by Christmas, said: “I’m always confident.”

The traditional post-election party leaders’ debate – the so-called “Elephant Round” – is underway on German television (Deutsche Welle has it with English interpretation here). Some choice quotes:

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Major Jewish groups have expressed alarm and dismay at the performance of the far-right, anti-immigration AfD.

Josef Schuster of Germany’s Central Jewish Council, said the party “tolerates far-right thoughts and agitates against minorities”, adding that he expected Germany’s other parties to “reveal the true face of the AfD and unmask their empty, populist promises.”

The head of the World Jewish Congress, Ronald Lauder, called Merkel a “true friend of Israel and the Jewish people” and denounced the AfD as “a disgraceful reactionary movement which recalls the worst of Germany’s past”.

One of the AfD’s lead candidates, Alexander Gauland, said last week that no other country has faced up to past crimes the way Germany has and the Nazi years “don’t affect our identity anymore.”

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24 Sept 201714.30 EDT

Carmen Fishwick

German voters have been sharing their reaction to the AfD’s result via The Guardian’s online callout:

Raphael, 19, student, Green party voter:

I’m certain that a big factor in the support for AfD was the stream of refugees coming to our country. I think that it’s a mix of that, the general protest against the establishment as it is seen everywhere and fears about the future and identity of our country - justified or not. We need to modernise our economy and education system. At the same time we have to address the tensions in our society by fighting inequality.

Simon, 23, SPD voter:

AfD supporters held their views long before the refugee crisis and maybe we just have to accept that they won’t go away. Surprisingly, the AfD has many supporters in the upper and middle classes and they probably like their hardcore neoliberal programme as much as their inflammatory rhetoric. But the left has certainly failed to convince people that political and economic issues lay at the heart of the problem and not the refugees.

Monika, 67, AfD voter:

I voted for the AfD because I wanted a real change in policy. The dictatorship of Angela Merkel must come to an end, definitely. The German culture is threatened by the many refugees and migrants who want to stay here. It can’t go on like that, definitely.

Magali, 40, SPD voter:

I feel deeply ashamed that a rightwing party will now sit in our parliament, 72 years after the Nazis destroyed Europe and killed millions of people. It seems that a lot of Germans are racist and blame everything on foreigners. We’re a rich country and able to help refugees. AfD voters want to turn back the clocks, they’re full of hate against everything that’s different.

Here’s how to contribute if you would like to tell us your views:

Turnout was up on the previous election, public broadcaster ZDF reports: from 71.5% to 76.5%. And here’s the broadcaster’s latest projection for the number of seats each party will hold in the Bundestag:

CDU/CSU: 218

SPD: 138

Left: 60

Greens: 60

FDP: 68

AfD: 87

More evidence that the 2015-2016 migration crisis, and Angela Merkel’s decision to open Germany’s borders to tens of thousands of refugees, played a part in the AfD’s sharply increased vote share.

Merkel conceded this in her post election speech to party supporters, saying it was clear security mattered as much to people as prosperity.

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A number of commentators are warning about the difficulty of negotiating a “Jamaica” coalition, mainly because of the incompatible positions of the Greens and the CDU’s sister party, the Bavarian CSU.

Mathieu von Rohr of Der Spiegel reckons that if talks don’t work out, Germany could be heading for new elections ...

The AfD has always scored better in former east Germany than in the west, but it seems to have done particularly well in these elections, says Guardian Berlin correspondent Kate Connolly:

Former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt makes the same point:

The latest updated projections from national broadcaster ARD look like this: