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THE largest country in the European Union did not make the largest news this time. No Eurosceptic "shock" or "earthquake" rippled through German politics as it shook France, Britain and other member states. It was more like a deep-mantle rumbling, one that may shift German politics more slowly.

First, the losers. Most obviously, these include Germany's once-grand liberal party, the Free Democrats (FDP). They continued their slide into irrelevance, getting a mere 3.4% of the vote, compared with 11% in 2009. They are no longer a factor in German politics for the time being.

Less obviously, the losers also include the nominal victors: the centre-right camp of Angela Merkel, the chancellor. It is composed of Mrs Merkel's party, the Christian Democrats (CDU), and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU. With 35.3% of votes, this "union" of the two remains Germany's largest delegation to Strasbourg. But it did worse than in 2009, when it got 37.9%. In domestic politics, this counts as a setback. Almost all of the loss, moreover, occurred in Bavaria, where the the CSU had dabbled in soft-Eurosceptic innuendo during the campaign.

The main winner is the closest thing Germany has to a Eurosceptic party, the one-year old Alternative for Germany, led by Bernd Lucke, an economics professor (pictured above). The Alternative claims to be only anti-euro, not anti-EU. Mr Lucke says he wants no part in a coalition with actual Eurosceptics in Strasbourg and will instead start talks with Britains Tories and other conservative parties. But even this milder form of anti-Brussels rhetoric marks a permanent change in Germany, where such talk has been taboo until now. The Alternative got 7%. It now has a good chance of entering state parliaments in Saxony, Brandenburg or Thuringia in their regional elections this summer. It could even enter the federal Bundestag in 2017. The mainstream parties can no longer simply ignore it.

The other winners were the Social Democrats (SPD), currently Mrs Merkel's coalition partners in Berlin but usually archrivals to the CDU and CSU. They reached 27.3%, a good gain from their 20.8% in 2009. Martin Schulz, a German Social Democrat who campaigned as the party's top candidate, still has not given up hope of becoming the next president of the European Commission. At the very least, he'll have to be bought off with some other big job.

In domestic politics, the SPD may now become a more cantankerous coalition partner within Mrs Merkel's government in Berlin, just as the CSU will become a less boisterous coalition partner for a while. All of them, meanwhile, will soon have to figure out how to respond to the increasingly eloquent, skillful and confident needling of the Alternative for Germany.