BERLIN – Germany’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SDP) won Sunday’s (Sept. 26) general election with 25.7% of the vote, beating the conservative union CDU/CSU, according to the provisional election results released by the Federal Returning Officer early Monday (Sept. 27) morning.
The SDP’s share of the vote surged by 5.2 percentage points from four years ago, while its main rival the conservative union of Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and its sister party Christian Social Union (CSU) suffered heavy losses.
The provisional results showed the CDU/CSU union took only 24.1% of the vote in this year’s parliamentary election, 8.9 percentage points lower than in the last election. It marks the end of the dominant role of the conservatives ever led by incumbent Chancellor Angela Merkel for over a decade in the country’s Bundestag, or the lower house of Parliament.
Meanwhile, the Green Party received 14.8% of votes in the election, making it the third-largest political faction in parliament, followed by the business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) and the right-wing and Eurosceptic party Alternative for Germany with 11.5% and 10.3% respectively, according to the Federal Returning Officer.
Scoring 4.9% of the vote, the far-left Die Linke (Left Party) failed to pass the five-percent threshold to enter the parliament. (Xinhua) – bny
