BERLIN >> Germans voted for a change of leadership Sunday, handing the most votes in a parliamentary election to centrist conservatives, with the far-right in second, and rebuking the nation’s left-leaning government for its handling of the economy and immigration.

Early returns and exit polls almost certainly mean the country’s next chancellor will be Friedrich Merz, leader of the Christian Democrats. But he will need at least one or — in a possibility that Germans were hoping to avoid — two coalition partners to govern.

“We have won it,” Merz told supporters in Berlin on Sunday evening, promising to swiftly form a parliamentary majority to govern the country and restore strong German leadership in Europe.

The election, which was held seven months ahead of schedule after the collapse of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s unpopular and long-troubled three-party coalition, will now become an essential part of the European response to President Donald Trump’s new world order. It drew what appeared to be the highest voter turnout in decades.

Merz, 69, has promised to crack down on migrants and slash taxes and business regulations in a bid to kick-start economic growth. He also vowed to bring a more assertive foreign policy to help Ukraine and stronger leadership in Europe at a moment when the new Trump administration has sowed anxiety by scrambling traditional alliances and embracing Russia.

Merz, a businessperson, was once seen as a potentially better partner for Trump, but in the campaign’s final days he mused about whether the United States would remain a democracy under Trump. He strongly condemned what Germans saw as meddling by Trump administration officials on behalf of the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD.

“My top priority, for me, will be to strengthen Europe as quickly as possible so that we can gradually achieve real independence from the USA,” Merz said in a televised roundtable after polls closed. “I would never have thought I’d be saying something like this on TV, but after last week’s comments from Donald Trump, it’s clear that this administration is largely indifferent to Europe’s fate, or at least to this part of it.”

The first wave of returns and exit polls suggested that his Christian Democrats and their sister party, the Christian Social Union, would win a combined 29% of the vote. It was a low share historically for the top party in a German election, and the second-lowest showing ever for Merz’s party in a chancellor election.

There was suspense Sunday evening about the coalition Merz would be able to assemble, but he was clearly hoping for a rerun of the centrist governments that ran Germany for much of former Chancellor Angela Merkel’s 16-year tenure: the Christian Democrats in the lead, with the Social Democrats as a lone junior partner.

It was unclear if that would be possible. The Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, which is a pro-Russia splinter from the old German left, was hovering near the 5% support needed to get into parliament. If it clears the threshold, its presence could force Merz into a three-party coalition with two relatively liberal parties. Another party more ideologically aligned with Merz, the pro-business Free Democrats, appeared likely to fall below 5% and miss the cut.

The three-party scenario could mean the repeat of a potentially unwieldy and unstable government for Germany, with some of the same vulnerabilities as the one that recently collapsed.

AfD’s results

The complication comes because Merz has promised never to join with the second-place finisher, the AfD, which routinely flirts with Nazi slogans and whose members have diminished the Holocaust and have been linked to plots to overthrow the government. But the returns showed that the AfD is a growing force in German politics, even if it fell short of its ambitions in this election.

The AfD doubled its vote share from four years ago, largely by appealing to voters upset by the millions of refugees who entered the country over the past decade from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Ukraine and elsewhere. In the former East Germany, it finished first.

It is the strongest showing for a far-right party since World War II, according to projections. Its vote share appeared to fall short of its support in the polls from a year ago, however. Many analysts had been expecting a stronger showing.

Its vote share appeared to fall short of its high mark of support in the polls from a year ago, however. Many analysts had been expecting a stronger showing, afterthe AfD received public support from Vice President JD Vance and billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk. It sought to make political gains out of a series of deadly attacks committed by migrants in recent months, including in the final days of the campaign.

But that boon never materialized. Reaction to the recent attacks and the support from Trump officials may have even mobilized a late burst of support to Die Linke, the party of Germany’s far left, which campaigned on a pro-immigration platform, some voters suggested in interviews Sunday.

The AfD’s candidate for chancellor, Alice Weidel, said it is “open for coalition negotiations” with Merz’s party.

Merz dismissed the idea that voters wanted a coalition with AfD. “We have fundamentally different views, for example on foreign policy, on security policy, in many other areas, regarding Europe, the euro, NATO,” he said.

“You want the opposite of what we want,” Merz added.

The most likely coalition partner for Merz appears to be Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats, even though they experienced a steep drop in support from four years ago.

The only other possible partner would be the Greens, who appeared to be poised for fourth place in the voting. Negotiations with possible partners began soon after polls closed Sunday.

This report includes information from the Associated Press.