Angela Merkel's conservatives won a resounding victory in Sunday's general election, sharply increasing their share of the vote to around 42 percent and putting her on track for a third term.
But she may have to form an alliance with the rival center-left Social Democrats because her junior coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party, saw its support slump so dramatically that it may not make the five percent threshold needed for parliamentary representation.
"We will do everything to ensure that the next four years will be successful ones for Germany," a beaming Merkel told cheering supporters. "We will now wait for the election outcome, it's too early to say how we will proceed. We will discuss all this tomorrow in our leadership meetings. But we can already celebrate today because we did great."
Her SPD rival, Peer Steinbrück, told supporters: "The ball is in Frau Merkel's court, she has to find herself a majority."
An alliance with SPD, a so-called "grand coalition" of the two biggest parties, would be a repeat of the right-left alliance with which she governed in her first term from 2005 until 2009.
Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union party and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, were at 42.1 percent, up sharply from 33.8 percent in 2009, an ARD network TV projection based on actual results showed after polling stations closed at 6 p.m. CET.
A TV projection by ZDF showed a similar result with the conservatives at 42.3 percent.
"This is the FDP's bitterest defeat in decades," said Christian Lindner, a senior member of the party leadership.
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