According to exit polls, Chancellor Angela Merkel's quasi-conservative CDU-CSU bloc won 32.5% of the vote, which will make them the largest group in the new Bundestag. However, that was down from 41.5% in the 2013 election.
Support for their closest rivals, pinkish Social Democrats (SPD), who were junior partners in Frau Merkel's "grand coalition", slumped to 20% -- a new post-war low. They say now that they will take up the role of opposition to whatever coalition the Chancellor cobbles together.
In a solid third place, just as Walt predicted, is the AfD (Alternativ für Deutschland / Alternative for Germany) which stunned the liberal establishment, not just in Germany but across Europe, by winning 13.5% of the vote. Thus they will enter the Bundestag for the first time. The result is indeed, as Frauke Petry says, "a political earthquake".
