tonight reaching the end of the campaign trail as germany decides voters are choosing a new parliament a decision that will lead to a new german government and maybe a new german chancellor polls close in one hour and then we'll have the first hint of what's in store will it be a change in

a win for martin schultz in the social democrats or will it be another four years with the conservatives in charge and with chance or until america keeping her title as the longest serving leader in europe and the western world and the race is on for third place it could be the a deal of the alternative for germany on course to become the first a far right party to enter germany's parliament in decades or will it be a resurrection for the market friendly f.t.p. kicked out of parliament in the last election. year with d.w. news and we are live in berlin watching political history in the making tonight as germany decide its. well welcome to our special coverage of the german general election germany decides my name is brant goff it is just after five pm here in germany and we are in the

last hour of voting polls close at six pm sharp the clock that you see in the top right corner of your screen is counting down the minutes six p.m. the first moment of truth if you will that is when the first exit poll numbers will be released now those numbers will give us a first glimpse at the decision taken today by the sixty plus million germans eligible to vote opinion polling ahead of the election indicates chancellor angela merkel will emerge as leader of the biggest party in parliament the bill does talk her rival martin schultz needs a major upset to prevent that from happening but opinion polls have shown his social democratic party performing poorly most of this campaign. we will bring you the results as soon as we get them plus analysis to put the numbers into context and to do that my colleagues monica jones and peter craven will be here in the studio and when they're going to do you fancy meeting you soon

here monica is going to be our numbers cruncher for the evening bringing us the numbers what kind of number and brant i have access to the data from our polling company in for a test to deem up i'll get the numbers as they come in the first to watch out for will be the exit polls in less than an hour at six p.m. closely followed by the projected results plus plenty of analysis of voting patterns overall turn out plenty of stuff for the two of you to discuss all right and of course peter you're going to have lots of experts to talk with saluting i'm going to be bringing you an in-depth look at developments throughout the evening with a host of interesting guests joining me here in the studio all right for tonight we will take you to where news is happening we have our correspondents stationed in the party's election headquarters our thomas sparrow is with the social democrats and michele if there is with cd you party michele we're going to start with you this is the night when everyone's expecting to make history.

absolutely and this is also the night where the german chancellor and a city you party will be glued to the screens they too have read as they seen the polling they do expect to win but the big question is is this the kind of victory that they saw last time around those forty one percent they people here are also expecting not tipper reached once again so the next tonsil a may well still be machall whom everybody knows but she would then have most likely a very different scenario possibly not being able to govern with the s.p.d. once again so that's what everybody here is bracing themselves for and told us sparrow headquarters is tonight the night of big losses for the social democrats. well that's what many people here feel welcome also from us from the headquarters of the s.p.d. where we will soon find out the result of the social democrats on the condit martin

show and what we will also start to find out what the next four years will mean for the s.p.d. all right thomas farrow and michelle a customer we will be checking in with you a lot this evening and we have our correspondents on the streets of berlin as well as in north east germany where the far right a.f.d. is hoping to cause an upset when again so i'm going to american susan is going to is in the city of sherry and uncle americas constituency and funny for char is our roving reporter across the german capital berlin tonight funny let's start with you so give us the four one one on this election night. brandt across that you see behind me is it wants to be an independent crowd who doesn't want to be associated with any political party these people behind the gather to celebrate democracy to celebrate the fact that you can actually go out there and vote and you should x. a cue to drive so there is one number these people behind me are looking forward to and it's to voter turnout they say the higher the voter to. the better for

democracy but there's a different number however that gets them worried and that's the number by which the a.f.p. to far right party and the problem and they say that make challenge democracy who will know of course a much more in an hour thank you very much funny and gone to is in sherene in northern germany good evening to you so me you're in a.s.d. territory tonight. that's right friend the reason we're in the capital of the state of nicholas berg western renia if this isn't a bastion of support for the a far right populist the party in the last regional elections here they won twenty percent of the book that is more than chancellor merkel c.d.u. and that is especially significant because chancellor merkel actually has her constituency in the state in the northeast corner of mecklenburg less a marina and she is not at risk of losing her own electoral district to the a.f.p. she would still be chancellor but it would be very embarrassing for the chancellor and for her seat in the party now her challenger in that district like any other

he's going to be i can be honest but like hell i'm going. to be. all right soon as he was gone in sherene and the funny fish are in berlin tonight forest we will be talking with you of course through the course of this evening all right we are also on the ground with two parties that have a want to play for this evening covering events at the far right if d. is a lot of pots and so i mean young is with the market friendly f f d b o it's on your color i see right there we're going to start with you show a lot of good evening. good evening brenda i'm at traffic a nightclub in the center of carolyn and this location was chosen by the as deed to watch the election results of a party that campaigned on an anti migrant and time akhil and anti muslim platform is set to enter the german parliament for the first time and is also set to become

the first far right party after the second world war to clear the five percent hurdle the a.f.d. members i've gotten a chance to talk to tonight they are hoping and even expecting to have results in the double digits and to even become the search strongest party in the german problem and. killer is with the left party tonight is there going to be anything for the left party to celebrate tonight. well there still was. battling case and they choose for their election party in the district of prime back a band named people starting to flood in from the outside big on the problem at. the aim is to come in third. as they did during the last elections but it is highly doubtful that most will succeed because they are competing against the right wing i have to be. your girl and your lot of thoughts tonight on the story

for us at the left party and of the alternative for germany the a.f.p. thank you very much we checking in with you throughout the evening as well. and no german election would be complete without analysis from our chief political correspondent melinda crane she's here with me at the big table melinda we've been here many times before another election and the world obviously wants to know how will this election turnout tonight who's going to win that's right and all eyes of course on chancellor merkel she is greatly esteemed around the world in fact it's not too long since several western publications called her the leader of. the free world so of course she is one of the magnets for attention from our international viewers but the other big question for many many people not only here in germany but of course around the world is how will that far right party the f.t. the alternative short for germany perform in this election until now germany has

not had a significant far right presence certainly not in the national parliament that can change and that will change politics in this country in a number of ways that i'm sure we will be talking about in the course of the evening and there have been a lot of observers around the world looking at this election and saying that even if america wins another term as chancellor through tonight's results the real winner will be. the far right party i've also heard this referred to as americal will be in the lead but she may not be a winner and i think that kind of captures that we are certainly likely to see her party drop in terms of its share of support compared to the last election and i think her. basically the voters i have talked to have said they are going to to check the box for the christian democratic party her conservatives have said they're not all that enthused about the choice they're making that choice because they think she's a known commodity they know that she's good at making decisions under difficult

circumstances there is respect here at home as well for her standing internationally but there's a vague sense even on the part of many c.d.u. voters that all is not right in the domestic policy arena and again we can go into details later on but there's a sense that the last four years have not been used to prepare this country for the future last four years and just ask you there's a lot of people looking at this in c. ok if we get another four years with under merkel will this be her last term as chancellor she's made it pretty clear that it is likely to be and i think she has seen the peak in. her support and popularity she certainly has come back from where she stood a year or year and a half ago if you remember the immediate aftermath of the regime migration crisis and then persia particularly the events that occurred over new years twenty fifteen to twenty sixteen people very very troubled about what that huge influx could bring some of that has calmed and yet some social cultural anxiety is very much part of

this year's election that's what we're seeing in support for the alternative for germany and we're hearing it even from voters for some of the mainstream parties so again i think she's not likely to to run again after these four years we'll see if she makes it all the way through this four year term she undoubtedly will be the person leading the next coalition barring some enormous surprise an hour from now but nonetheless i think she is likely to have a challenging time with it or it will in the current thank you very much if you are just joining us this is d.w. news elections special germany disarms an exciting time this evening and is going to be a lot about the numbers and monica jones is the person we go to tonight opinion i've got opinion polls they're they're not super fresh but that is because there is a common understanding that opinion pollsters don't release fresh numbers to close to election day they don't want to have too much influence on the decision of

voters so what we have here is the latest opinion polls by in protest gather twelve days ago surveying one thousand five hundred ten voters and here we can clearly see that bag then the c.d.u. c.s.u. would have come in that thirty seven percent of the votes the s.p.d. at twenty percent greens at seven and a half percent the f.t.p. with a nine point five percent as brant said earlier that would actually lift them well above the five percent hurdle so they could make a comeback of the left party here at nine percent and the alternative for. germany the d. would make quite an impressive debut here with twelve percent entering the german a wouldn't a stop when this opinion poll was taken half of those surveyed actually said they don't know yet who to vote for and i think it'll be very interesting to find out how many of them actually do go out and vote this could be very important for for

the outcome of the election went an appeal from the german chancellor and from martin schultz just a couple of days ago for people to go out and vote they don't want to see levels go down to the levels that they saw in two thousand and thirteen two thousand and nine belinda let me pull you in let's talk about what the voters are doing right now and the far right party is profiting because all the other parties are him origi supporters so we really can't talk about there being like we've been talking about the us and for the past year and a typical angry voter is there a typical. voter well certainly a lot of the people who are voting for the f.d.a. are voting in protest against mainstream politics and that is reminiscent of what we see in with for example supporters of donald trump but also supporters of other right wing nationalist populist parties also here in europe so those voters

protest voters they are easier to mobilize than let's say simply dissatisfied citizens who feel that their economic standing is not what they wish those voters sometimes simply stay at home they're frustrated with politics they feel that their party perhaps they were formerly social democrats isn't working in their interests yet they don't always go to vote but protest voters voters who are angry voters who say the elite is hurting this country whether it's because of migration whether it's because of bailouts for greece or for other reasons those voters. are more likely to go to the polls and so of course that can skew the result in favor of the f.t. and one of the things that we're going to be watching for is not only the per the well the percentage of seats but also will the a.f.d. then come in as a strong third party because that means potentially if the two main parties the s.p.d. the social democrats and the c.d.u.

. conservatives were once again together to govern together in a growing grand coalition they have to it would become the leader of the opposition that carries a number of perquisites including for example the right to open debate in the bundestag when it's about the budget that is a powerful position and it will be a powerful platform for discourse that may trouble many german citizens as you know if we've seen the threshold on what is acceptable political discourse dropping here in germany although not always as far as what we know from our own country or that's true of it it's not like what we've seen the united states and we hear time and time again about about the united states and also about the u.k. being societies that are split down the middle we really can't apply that to germany the right this is not a society that is fifty percent happy fifty percent on at all no not at all in fact eighty percent of germans say they feel the economy is doing well in general and that they themselves are doing quite ok economically in other words as one

publication titled it this is not about the economy stupid quoting the. old phrase environment ideas exactly so that is not necessarily a governing factor and interestingly enough on the subject of polarization one of the things that german voters really like about uncle americal and many of them do like her with all the sense they may have you know we're getting to the point where there's been enough nonetheless over fifty percent of german voters in general say that if it were head to head race they would vote for her seventeen percent of social democratic voters say they would vote for the chance. if it were a personal contest which of course it is not but one of the things i like about her she's non polarizing in every speech she's got she's got something for both sides that's part of her secret and it's one of the thing that drives her opponents and that's right i mean if you've got a cause if you've got to do issues or you're doing business with the german chancellor angela merkel the chances are pretty good that she will appropriate it

as her own right before the asymmetric mobilization to actually move your party into other party's territory but you know she doesn't only do it for political opportunism or calculation she's somebody who looks at long term trends and says this is where society is going and that's where we need to position ourselves so i think it is not entirely disingenuous but it certainly does take the it basically pulls the carpet out from under the feet of people like her opponent martin schultz who felt that he never got into a real debate with her about the issues that count that's a very good point i want to bring back this this this topic of other parties being kingmakers for angela merkel if she wants to form a new government let's go now to simon young so i'm going to see anybody at the headquarters of the business from the f.t.p. so i mean you're with a group of people who want to come out of the political wilderness tonight they were kicked out of parliament four years ago they'd like to come back into parliament and they'd like to be in

a coalition with america one thing. that's right brained here the free democrats there's great excitement any great confidence that tonight's. four years in the political wilderness they're about to return to parliament as you say this is a policy that's often described as close to business and they call it. but it's down the decades after that electoral disaster back in twenty thirteen they've regrouped under a new leader christiane when he's young and dynamic and everyone here tonight is looking at the polls and they really believe that they're about to return to the bundestag after four years and quite possibly could have a chance of being part of the next german government as well all right so i mean young at the f.t.p. headquarters on the we're going to be joining you throughout the evening as well this could be the night that belongs to the f.t.v. thank you very much simon we've heard from our correspondents in the field and for

melinda right here at the big table we want to hear now from the voice of the people what do they have to say we're going to start in berlin where the election today coincided by the way with the marathon. on the difference sure in its rate to have a marathon on election day of course there are lots of people on the streets people can vote tally and then enjoy the race. and. it hasn't we've already voted by mail since we're not living in berlin i couldn't have voted after the marathon. yeah i think you got a full and for the young generation it's important to vote voters on the whole they're getting older so young people must engage with it as well. so when you went out to find it.

in a demo in a democracy there's no excuse for not voting especially at a time when slanted views are everywhere it's important that people turn out on voting day the. lawyers on talk to follow vacationing in. jesus here. this year because i'm part of a mixed nationality family i did know in the least wish to have a right wing radical party in parliament so. i sure hope for this in the i hope my election is decisive i don't find it that great when we have a mess with six parties. we're watching t.w. news there are about forty minutes to go before polls close here in germany and what promises to be an historic election let me remind you of what is at stake this evening i'm going miracle is bidding to win a fourth term in office as chancellor of germany the far right populist alternative for germany the a.f.d. wants to get into the federal parliament for the first time and then there is merkel's social democratic challenger martin short see wants to prove the opinion

polls wrong and become germany's next leader. well i'm going merrill has spent twelve years as german chancellor want to take a look now at how merkel became germany's first female leader. and that americans have and has become a symbol of a brand of power driven by the assumption that. the mother of the nation knows best after twelve years as german chancellor the e.u.'s longest serving leader is respected by allies and adversaries alike. unafraid to stand up to u.s. president donald trump when he questions the value base of the west side. and the times when we can't rely on others somewhat. machall at the height of her unlikely rise to power. when the

east german physicist switched to politics after the fall of the berlin wall nobody expected her to ever come this far how much cause go as the chancellor of reunification called her was initially surprised at her own success. in the final days of the last government of communist east germany did you ever imagine yourself becoming a minister here no absolutely not and. yet this was only the beginning of the political newcomer from the formerly communist east learned fast. it was she who sealed the fate of her political patron home after a party funding scandal. defying the male dominated dynamics of her own c.d.u. party she became its new leader and won her first term as chancellor in two thousand and five. angela merkel has a reputation of thinking things through to the end before she makes up her mind

only her mind can change. when the fukushima disaster struck in japan she didn't hesitate to pull the plug on german nuclear power within weeks several reactors were taken offline. that's for this changes things also in germany. merkel forced through austerity measures in the midst of the financial crisis soon she became a hate figure in greece and across much of southern europe. but it was her well coming response to the mike racing crisis in two thousand and fifteen that became the defining moment of her political career machall decided to go it alone without consulting her european partners. we can do it she won international praise for her humanitarian response now she's often called the leader of the for you won't but her refugee policy has given rise to fall right populist small groups

of protesters from the far right alternative for germany cloaked merkel's campaign the if tea party is making a bid to go mainstream. so dealing with xenophobic populism a tome in germany may prove to be mackerels next big challenge. well this is the fourth time that i'm going merkel is running for chancellor it was twelve years ago that her predecessor gary hart reuter called for a snaffle election now he lost and a few months later i'm going to america was sworn in as germany's new chancellor it was the year that another german that took over in the vatican you may remember cardinal ratzinger became pope benedict the sixteenth and there were some royal wedding bells ringing princes or prince charles or other married his longtime partner there she is the happy couple those two camilla parker bowles four years

later germans went to the polls again and miracle was reelected and that is the same year that barack obama was sworn in as u.s. president now obama a person that america would later say have become a close friend of hers and fans around the world that you're more into the sudden death of the king of pop michael jackson. then in the last election merkel became chancer for a third time and it was the year that byron munich one of the all the bundesliga cups and the champions league five trophies all together and then there was that it hit. gangnam style a gong of style became a global hit and inspired dance craze but i don't think we ever saw on the americans doing that. and i don't think i've ever seen my colleague michelle a co-founder do that either she is standing by at the christian democrats headquarters in berlin i can hear her last election if there maybe tonight if the

numbers turn out good i want to see you do it yet grand well the evening is young my dear you just wait so let's let's talk let's talk about what we can expect tonight i mean if the numbers come out well or even better than the polls have suggested is this going to be four more years of for america to effect change or are we looking at even with a victory four years of a lame duck chancellor. well if the polls are right there's opinion polls pre-election there is some change in store for one that yes the c.d.u. is very likely to become the strongest partner in tightening it to also then try and form a government and that would most likely see the merkel become so once again having said that many conditions have changed and we saw throughout the migration crisis that policy also changed in this changing climate because this can be

no doubt a tool that open arms policy on migration is also very much at the core of a lot of criticism within her party and outside and that's also the reason and that's also what opinion polls have indicated one of the greatest fears of germans is that. too many foreigners could come into the country that only could not deal with integration properly and this is where c.d.u. members here feel that there might be some kind of dressing down at the ballot box in store for the german chancellor angela merkel who so become this larger than life political brand after all she still is the main reason why people vote for this party that's also what opinion polls have indicated but that some forty percent plus could be in store once again and that her current coalition

partner the social democrats who are so limping in these polls. head of this election day could once again become her partner in government those are the big question marks here and then of course the question of how much press there will be from the far right with the far right alternative for germany set to do in parliament to so a very different climate and the big question is will she become a chancellor of change will she become more of a visionary this is something that's been criticized over and over again that she is somebody who reacts to crisis that she's a good manager of crisis so one question is does she have a vision of where to take germany in the future and how would a new government and. in her force to respond to this new challenge from the far right here in germany you know her critics would say that she has already been affected by the influence of the far right and you have to be because all parties

in germany some say have skewed to the right and isn't that the case with angela merkel as well she did what the refugees come into the country back in two thousand and fifteen but after that she had said that that will never happen again. yes well let's not. what is fact and what is our interpretation what is fact is that yes certainly there was this open arms policy the german chancellor still refuses actually incidentally to put an upper limit on refugees coming into the country people seeking refuge but what we have seen happening certainly since twenty fifteen is a tightening of those conditions step by step with more countries declared safe countries. with people no longer eligible to seek asylum here in germany and countries like afghanistan being declared safe to return to you know that seemed unthinkable at that very historic moment in time when she opened germany for an

unlimited number of migrants coming in but now we see the f.t. the far right if the taking credit for this for this policy but at the same time you also see this see if you system party of the c.d.u. into varia who has traditionally always been that one step further towards conservatism which is insisted there should be no party further to the right than the c.s.u. itself it claims that it has driven that change but one thing is for sure there is a big difference from where this migration crisis started from that open arms policy and what germany stands right now understand machall on the migration issues all right our correspondent michele look at the headquarters of the c.d.u. on this election night two thousand and seventy michel thank you very much. let's bring in peter craven now my colleague and he's at the second big table tonight peter you've got the salt table talk to get that's right yes welcome to the top

table there are twenty eight minutes to go now it's getting very exciting here all eyes on the a.f.d. the result there but all eyes to of course on the historic results in the making for angela merkel i've got three guests to talk about that to talk about angela merkel including cassandra can able who is a comedian and impersonator author you've guessed in america. we've also got your guns and with us is a dutch journalist who specializes in far right politics far right parties in europe germany and your home country the netherlands and we've got to do dempsey with us from carnegie europe who is also a blogger and an author and author of a book called the miracle phenomenon judy what in a nutshell is the miracle phenomenon america phenomenon is the ability of america to tap into the public opinion move or this then move ahead with this and make sure the other political parties can't wrap her ideas i'm very interested in the bit that you just said about how to move with public opinion sundra let's listen to

a little let's watch a very short clip of cassandra impersonating angela merkel watch this first of all and then we'll talk about angle of merkel moving with the times moving with the trends let's bring. in little. girl t.v. don't even appear in bold they. did and how. many if hope that her in ireland. so cassandra as a comedian and as an impersonator you clearly have looked very very closely at angle of merkel and we were talking about the merkel phenomenon and from you from what you're saying there i sense that you believe that the merkel phenomena is that she's like a chameleon that can change her colors with the moods and with the seasons yes and there's something on an emotional basis she somehow cute she's a little bit brittle. a little bit stiff when she when she's laughing it doesn't

really come out and i think on an emotional level this is what people like as well as the absolute absolute like she is stiff in the emotion doesn't come out that she is unknowable it makes her some kind of cute you know all she sometimes she seems like a little likable yeah she's i don't people warm to angela merkel or melinda or a political correspondent was just talking about how difficult it is for germans to become enthusiastic about tango america well i think and the enthusiast them is not her biggest strength. and so other people not really you know like him and she enters yesterday but i think they like her and really the absence of vanity is something that is very very important because before it was scooter who was you know he sued somebody because he said that his hair is died and so that is really vain and i'm going to merkel she was attacked because of her hair and all this and she she just didn't care she wore through all of this with her little you know

stiffness and all to the humility of. what things are going to medical health or perhaps dutch politicians don't and the dutch voters perhaps admire well first of all i was in the whole western world angle or merkel is the most popular politician in the netherlands so i think she reminds us to the netherlands of the ninety's and of the eighty's when center politics was also in the netherlands very common after the populace came in two thousand and one you've seen a scattered political landscape and upon. arised political landscape and we don't have any politicians anymore who can lay a bridge between them and i think an american is very strong in doing that she's not ashamed to be center bomb attacks in the netherlands is almost a cuss word judy this is all pretty upbeat the way hearing about it i mean in the last couple of weeks of the election campaign it's been really vitriolic there's been good there's been hatred and reported by commentators much commentated on

wednesday where does that all come from suddenly it's coming from a very important trend the fact fragmentation of german politics we have seen over the last decade that big and mainstream public political parties losing support i mean hemorrhaging frankly but this election is really important because it's this area this space between nine percent and fifteen percent which is packed with four parties who are easing into the sea do you support the christian democrats easing into the social democrats it's all up for grabs who becomes terrorists and this is five this election represents actually success it could be america's failure for not being able to close in that space the success and the failure of angle america back to brant peter thank you very much over sixty million people can cast a vote in today's ballot germany tends to have relatively high turnout rates voters have been heading to the polls since eight o'clock this morning but head of the vote there were indications that a higher proportion of the electorate was undecided and that may play an important

role in the election's outcome i'm joined now by our reporter right here in berlin funny that you are and susan is gone but we're going to start with funny she is here in berlin our roving reporter funny what has the voter turnout been like today . well depends which city you look at here injure and in germany are there been some cities for example of unique hamburg and frankfurt they reported quiet high voter turnout numbers high relatively high compared to four years ago in berlin it's just zero point one percent higher so far but this is not the final results yet of course what you can say and what i've experienced as i was according stations today this morning is the people are really fired up and quite dynamic and active about really expressing their views and about going and making use of their right to to execute your right and their right to vote no one reason for that is and many people feel that the f.t.v.

authority for germany party the far right party may and to the parliament but just enter it by and by a higher percentage point now let me introduce you so madi has been checking going on versus a poster and numbers actually and this is johnny and mrs she's been part of a young a start up of paul's organization online post organization and of course brett you know when it comes to pollsters you never know what you get at the end of the day so let me ask. what is what are your findings so far how do you expect the tonight is going to turn out ok i think the night is still exciting we publish our last response on friday together which we go online and we saw rick come that. conservatives going to be strong but also like you mentioned the right wing party the will be will turn to the parliament and this for the first time it's going to be a big change for germany a lot of people of course who are asking questions questions and who are ready to

vote for the f.d.a. normally don't say that they will actually vote for that if the party just how accurate the other was numbers whether you think i think it depends a little bit on the math that's how you ask people that we asked online and which you only online face polls and of course a barrier of saying that you vote for right wing or you extreme party is less than if you asked on the by phone. what do you expect. in your polling results it's about ten percent for the f.t. is that number going to be even higher maybe it could be you have a marginal rate is around two or three percent on every poll so day is there is room for more or hopefully less than intimate so from an online polling station when i'm putting organization thank you very much brett as you hear of course there's a margin of error plus or minus three percent anything can happen tonight when it comes to the a.f.d. but there's also another number that people are looking forward to here for or that are looking forward to in this group this independent group a democratic group they just simply want to know how high devoted turnout was

because they say the higher the voter turnout the better for democracy and the better you can actually avoid far right parties and radical parties from entering the parliament because they're more people actually go out and vote. funny chart thank you very much that's an interesting theory too and that leads us directly to my colleagues the museum is gonda who is in a very in in north eastern germany tonight is i mean you just heard what funny was saying and this is this theory that if we have a higher turnout that is a good thing for democracy. there is also the school of thought that says a lot of the undecided voters when they are behind those curtains and when they cast their vote they're the ones who would vote for a party like the a.f.d. do you get that impression there. well but we got a lot of different impressions today out in speaking with voters and you know i was

actually on the road for six weeks of summer talking to lots of different voters and it's really hard to say because people have been undecided up until this very last moment and today what we heard over and over again is that people are talking about issues that they feel that the main parties are really paying attention to one of them the biggest issue that we heard on the road was a social justice this question of how fair and equal is germany we heard melinda say earlier that you know the german economy is a very strong one that is true and but what you have to remember is that there is not a lot of public investment happening at the moment people are saying what do i have from this wealth of that germany's enjoying at the moment if i go to work eight hours a day and i still can barely manage to put food on the table and for those people brant who are undecided is the last moment they're frustrated with the main parties and they weren't exactly sure where to put their vote i spoke to one man today who said i just went in there and i crossed something i don't even know what it was. only one of them say the german government has failed at every level when it comes

to the refugee crisis because. i think it was wrong to open the borders to everyone without checking to see who is entering our country. this is an. we're the generation that's experienced horrible things. why can't we explain that to the youths what we need now is compassion. because. it's gone to the point that locals are moving away for their peace and quiet and refugees are all coming instead you can get i have nothing against that but they have to fit in with us germans as a form envisioning the most important thing is that the far right parties like the a.f.p. don't get into parliament to do the rest doesn't really matter much to me and that's forming some sicko. so brant that last sentiment that we hear from the border is one that we did hear a few times today i mentioned earlier today that if he got twenty percent of the

vote here in the regional elections last september that is something that has shocked are quite a few the voters i spoke with one in five voters eligible voters in germany is over the age of sixty and we saw that well represented at the polling stations this morning and quite a few of them have said i remember what germany used to be like and i don't want to return to that state oh you see me you traveled as you were saying you spent most of the summer traveling through germany and talking to a lot of people and you talked with a lot of. supporters and can we talk about a typical. voter because you know as we saw from monica's we've heard from melinda all of the parties are losing voters to the a.f.p. . you know brand it is really hard to say if there is a typical voter but there are some issues that a lot of them seem to have an economy that is a frustration with the mainstream parties feeling like they are no longer being represented that their interests are not being represented you do see with a lot of a.f.d.

voters this question that i mentioned just earlier of social justice of wanting a bit more a bigger piece of the pie so to say and the other thing a brand is you do see a stronger support for the a.f.d. here in the former eastern part of the country rather than in the former west because that is also an issue here people saying look people the west are enjoying more of germany's wealth than we are so those are some of the factors that we saw in common on the road all right our correspondent susan is going to in sherene in northeastern germany tonight we'll be checking in with you a little bit later again so we thank you. well there is just about a quarter of an hour to go before polls close here in germany in what promises to be an historic election let me remind you of what is at stake this is an american is bidding to win a fourth term in office as chancellor of germany the far right populist party the alternative for germany b.f.d.

wants to get into the federal parliament for the first time and miracles social democratic challenger martin's olds wants to prove the opinion polls wrong and become germany's next leader. let me throw it over now to my colleague peter craven he's over at the top table and they're going to talk about the de peter fry brains which we're all trying to work out what the a.f.p. really is what it amounts to judy is not even if as i say that judy dempsey and you'll be on sitting with me here at the talk table you'll i saw a headline in one of germany's leading newspapers today the frankfurter allgemeine and sides of one of the leading broadsheets they were referring at least in part to the the outcome of this election they've the fact that they could get double digit figures and they said the future of democracy is at stake is that hysteria or what those those would not be my words do the same things were being said when in the netherlands been for this party came into parliament a lady also gave will this party but. you know we have to look at the a of d.

as a party where people are democratic people but the party intrinsically is not anti democratic and so i think from that perspective and we should look at the a.v. as it is now doesn't mean it can change in the future but a democracy as at stake i think and i think germany's democracy is sent as a grown up democracy and can handle this not intrinsically antidemocratic says you know what to say to this day if the second isn't a monolithic party so that's that's but woods well for the future to get into the german parliament going to attack the f.t. is anti so many things it's very. you what it stands for it's anti muslim it's anti semitic it's have we seen some of the local government deputies what they say about immigrants refugees and they don't they haven't. they haven't actually explained this in the context of globalization as if you can close the borders of germany germany just shuts itself to the outside world this is just not actually rational

but then i've been to f.t. rallies and they don't like the foreign press or the german press that much you ask them what they stand for and it's always against something a party that is empty by very definition you know what does this party have to do with other far right parties like the from. friends or go party in the netherlands well i think first of all they bring a new kind of moral and politics well moral. or a lack of moral duty to say like when you know they haven't totally different political style different political way of speaking they're not afraid to use insults to you know to to be seen and to be heard of course they are both anti islam and the anti european integration and they are actually all parties who are right now not fit to govern at this moment they've dragged the debate we are told time and time again here in germany in the campaign to the right. is that the right

well then you put forth the position i'm going to record stands for because she's modernized the conservatives they've tracked it to the right but you must look at the fact that there are far left wing people actually voting for the f.t.l. of the ethnic russians and then they're the de industrialized part of west germany it's a mixture it's not monolithic it's it's tapped into something of a of an exhaustion of the mainstream parties so then what is going on with the media have another headline from from another very respected german newspaper george aside from from munich they say the hatred of the mob is entering poland. yeah no this is definitely a worrying this is definitely worrying but it also look you know beyond the a d. and c. that other established parties are seeing that they are being threatened in their own constituencies and they take over their their standpoint and i would also would like to see the media's focus a much more on this instead of the right wing populist party by itself because they

are the ones who legitimized right wing populist a body because voters are not ridiculous they see my vote for forty eight if he helps the f.d.p. and the c.d.u. c.s.u. becoming more conservative more anti immigration that's exactly what i want so my vote for the of the helps i think it's really important point to make and following on from this it would have been good joining the select election campaign if the mainstream parties actually spoke out for the really stood for and for and they should have spoken out for what the f.t. doesn't stand for a does stand for there's no point in ignoring the f.t. it's out there despite all the splinters within the party and looking back the mainstream party should be absolutely open and say this is if you vote for the f.t. this is part of stands for eleven minutes to go now so we've got the first figures the first clues as to how this election is going to pan out this evening judy what percent of the f.t. going to get what's your prediction. that's a mean question. but i mean i i have i have always said in my own mind maybe it's

base with thinking that they won't get to a place and that they free democrats might surprise us actually a county focusing on third place which is so very important in this election which is the smaller parties will have the place and be the king or as brenton's called her called i'm the queen maker you can give me a projection well you know i'm afraid that if he could get quite a lot of votes more than they actually are being polled because many people in the polls are not they don't dare to say they vote for if the and will do it probably now on the other hand if he has a problem that maybe some strategic voters think like ok we need a government as well so my heart is with the f.d.a. but i'm going to vote for f.t.p. but i'm afraid that the first sentiment is a bit stronger so that they could get more votes than if i just want to we got enough time for you to explain judy if the if the f.d.a. does emerge as the third force in german politics what does that mean they have special privileges then which makes them a gives them gives them real power in the german parliament anybody that's in the

tac is the second out of power money for campaigning to get money to set up an association to get money to build up their constituencies it's really very very important and this kind of big north we're talking if if the polls are correct we're talking about between sixty one hundred seats of the six hundred thirty so strong part of this is fancy it's a big wage it's a big range ok on that note a big wedge back to brant fear thank you very much. all right now we want to go to the headquarters of the green party here in berlin my colleague probably in front of mark is standing by far beyond so what's the mood there denied the greens and certainly not the first party that people are thinking of on this election night. well i have to say the atmosphere is slightly worried here slightly tens it has to do with the own party but also with regards to the other parties namely the far right a f t the green zone goal in this election campaign was to become the third

biggest party tonight and this is very unlikely at this given moment looking to the polls so the greens last election they had eight point four percent they want to end up higher this time and it doesn't look like that at the moment but nevertheless for the greens the important question really after this election night is what comes next will they go into opposition or would they go into discussions for so-called john mica coalition that's the buzzword of the night here john mica a coalition between greens with america's conservatives and the liberals that would be a first in germany and the greens for them is a lot at stake there traditionally very skeptical with working together with the liberals but they would go into discussions if the results are like it i mean it would be a it would be kind of an i did the shift for the greens what valby on the minute they would have to be in a coalition with the conservatives as well as with the f.t.p.

with the liberals. they're going to have to make some concessions there's going to have to be some compromises made if they want to be in government so who's going to have the leverage there isn't going to be the greens or is it going to be the c.d.u. and uncle americal. well for the greens it would be the biggest difficulty to talk to get to terms with the f.t.p. with the conservatives with the angle america that they would have a lot of common ground and that was actually the coalition that the greens favored at the end of this election campaign. coalition with the conservatives but with the liberals they are traditionally not getting value long for the the greens. as our liberal industry loving climate change ignoring party so basically one delegates here told me a party member it's like fire and water and this is of course very difficult for the greens but then again there's also some common ground for example if both

parties are in favor of an immigration law for germany there are other fields where they could get along these discussions would certainly be difficult but at the end of the day it would be the only option to avoid another grand coalition for germany it's all right on the mark at the headquarters of the greens here in berlin told me thank you very much we want to go down to on your colo she is at the headquarters for the left party and if you look at the platform for the left party on yet they appear to be really the only party in germany that has not been forced to skew itself to the right. and it's right that i still have trouble with the right because they are well aware that they are competing against the right wing and i am they may have their loyal voters all the votes of potential in a certain tammany they have the vote of attention and now with the socially we can

vote in this and so this is really really hot for them for that left party they might end up with that rather curious result it might be that i end up with a better result than at the last election but still not coming in as a third party which was then i. will write on your coworker at the headquarters of the left party here in berlin on you thank you very much melinda we've been talking about what is motivating voters tonight and the numbers the poll numbers show that most people in germany say that economic. their situation is pretty good but when they look out beyond their own doorstep they think that it's not an equitable in a fear desired that's right interestingly enough nearly the same large majority says yes the country is doing well economically and the country is too in equal

there is not enough social justice which means as we heard from sumi a little bit earlier you would think that a lot of the disaffected maybe could have been reached by a message that we need to do better on social justice and that of course was very much the message of martin schultz the socialist party governing as junior coalition partner for the past four years did a number of things that have boosted those who are less advantaged for example raising the minimum wage pension rights for mothers improving their pension chances so a number of areas and yet the voters don't see it again and again i've been told by disappointed as for the voters i don't know that i'm going to vote for my party again i feel like they haven't done anything during their time in office that really helps the disadvantaged and that is that is fascinating how do you know it's

not able to get that message over well i think it's a structural disadvantage of being a junior partner in a coalition with a powerful conservative party that keeps moving as you said earlier further toward the middle i think that's one part of it i think another part of it is in terms of their particular candidate martin short's he came in as an unknown yes he had had a high level position in european union politics for a long time that doesn't really count for a lot of voters and he didn't have a lot of visibility here during the campaign his party colleague signaller gaboriau who had been head of the party gave him the party leadership but took over the foreign ministry which is a highly visible position he was in the headlines all the time martin short's had fight to. it for attention so those are just two among another of factors that have clearly made it very very difficult for martin schulz to get his message across and we'll see how the s.p.d. numbers turn out in about three minutes but it could be that they fall below their

lowest point ever look for them to break that twenty three percent share of the vote if they fall below that this is a dark dark day for the s.p.d. we were just looking at pictures there of a polling place here in berlin we've got about two and a half minutes now before we get those first exit polls and if if we if we did numbers are going to be the polls have been suggesting. what will the s.p.d. do if they are out of power and sitting beside the a.f.d. their first big big dilemma is going to be do they go into a grand coalition once again with chancellor merkel's conservatives there's only a couple of coalitions that are probably going to be possible unless all the polls we've seen in advance turned out not to have been accurate but those would be a repeat of the grand coalition with the conservatives governing in an uneasy alliance with the social democrats or this so-called jamaica coalition and by the

way that word is used in german parties have colors just jamaica refers to the flag of the country jamaica which is green yellow and black the black is the conservative color the yellow is the color of the business friendly f.t.p. the free democrats the green is the party the green is the color of the green party so that's the reason people talk about this coalition that has some challenges but that might be the coalition that believe it or not many social democrats would prefer only about half of social democrats say that they actually want to see another grand coalition because they have the feeling their party has lost its mojo it's lost its direction so let me take the world to say that they really have their chance when they are. in situ we're a situation with uncle americal and the conservatives run she died so they're efficacies so they may indeed to the party leadership has said if a grand coalition looks like a possibility they will put it to a vote of the party basis and it's quite possible that the party would turn that

down so as i say we've got to watch the numbers that will give us a much better basis for making any kind of prediction but one of the big topics tonight is going to be potential coalitions and what they could mean both for germany domestically and abroad because those two coalitions that i just mentioned they would have very different consequences also for germany's foreign policy stance including for example on european union politics they are a jamaica coalition could involve some real tussles about about where we're going on european union all right melinda thank you very much and we're coming up now on six p.m. here in germany six p.m. . you're watching t.w. news our elections special germany decides i'm going to go off we are wired in berlin a special hello to our viewers around the world tonight including australia and the united states it is six pm here my colleague monica jones has the first exit poll

numbers monica. brant the first exit poll figures out and this is what they say. now as expected the strongest party with those exit polls numbers is anglo american studios c s u with thirty two and a half percent somewhat weaker than the polls suggested before that following suit . social democrats the s.p.d. currently at twenty percent so not of the dramatic the much feared drop below the twenty percent at the moment but just at twenty percent left party at nine percent the green party nine and a half percent so we just heard earlier that they are thinking about a possibility of entering a governing coalition with nine and a half percent there is a chance the democratic party the business friendly party here in yellow with ten and a half percent a very very strong comeback after four years out of parliament when they failed to

make the five percent hurdle and the a.f.d. the far right alternative for germany thirty eight and a half percent so pretty much with what opinion polls suggested earlier we just briefly look at the gains and losses here clearly the c.d.u. c.s.u. from last election four years ago very very strong losses year down nine percent of the votes s.p.d. also shedding a substantial amount of votes four point seven percent left party only slight losses green party gaining slightly one point one percent f.t.p. of course gaining strongly because they are well back on their way into parliament and the f.t. with the strongest gains at eight point eight percent but these are just exit polls this is what people say when they leave the polling stations the projected results in ten to fifteen minutes from now we'll get more clarity brant still fascinating

numbers there because rooting at the two. parties in this country losing hemorrhaging voters in the smaller parties right now if you can go by. suppose the smaller parties are coming out in a winning position we want to go to michelle except there she is at the headquarters of the conservative c d u party here in berlin good evening to you michele so we've got those first exit poll numbers and the c.d.u. remains the party with the most votes according to the exit poll but it's still losing. absolutely the cd you may have won and that's why people are cheering behind me but this is not a victory by any kind of imagine a stretch of the imagination in fact it's a slap in the face for the german chancellor angela merkel who is this icon of the c.d.u. parties become a leading figure in politics is the poorest result that the c.d.u. has had to so far under her leadership so she is likely to go into that

a fourth time in office here but she by no means has the kind of support that she had before she basically has a dent in what was known as teflon machall and we can already start drawing conclusions looking at the far right if tea party there because quite clearly there was an element of protest here and all the opinion polls that we saw ahead of these elections indicates that this was over her migration policy and which raised a lot of fizzy air and many about the future about what islam in germany means it's a stop in the face for the german chancellor and for that particular migration policy all right michelle equipment there at the headquarters for the c.d.u. michel thank you very much we want to go now to the headquarters for the social democrats here in berlin thomas sparrow is standing by there it's almost as if it's looking not so good for the conservatives it's looking really bad for the social

democrats where you are. and you should have seen brant the reaction just here at the s.p.d. headquarters when those first exit polls came in people were absolutely shocked you could hear the silence here no one was talking after they saw the exit polls for the c.d.u. for the conservatives but in particular obviously for their own party the social democrats and now the big question is what this will mean for the social democrats coming up it seems very unlikely that they would try and join another grand coalition that's something that many people in the party in particular in the base of the party do not necessarily seem very favorable when it comes to that possibility it is more likely that the s.p.d. will now try and and go into opposition try and rebuild from a from that perspective from my perspective in the opposition and that also has to do brant with the fact that the f.t. got such a result because if the s.p.d.

becomes a party in opposition they would certainly become the largest party in opposition and that would help them on the one hand to reconstruct on the other hand to prevent that the f.t. becomes the largest party in opposition or it's almost fairer the headquarters for the social democrats here in berlin thomas thank you very much. all right are we here at the big table with melanie yes let's talk about these numbers i mean first of all his historic low for the social democrats if you believe the exit polls but for the c.d.u. the conservatives it's abysmal as well yeah i think we have to wait and see what kind of polls we get in terms of voter issues and what was uppermost in their minds it's always important to see what the voters say before we draw conclusions about which policies exactly drove them away but this clearly does confirm the sense that a lot of us got in the interviews that we conducted with voters that people are

just frustrated with the grand coalition with the feeling that the country domestically is kind of in a holding pattern yes they like the chancellor personally yes they know that she's esteemed abroad and that pleases them as well but there is a feeling that the country is adrift that it's not really preparing for a future that will hold a lot of challenges demographic challenges economic challenges as you know and i think it's been mentioned investment has been very low even under a conservative led government so i think there is a general sense of unease even among many mainstream voters and if you look at these results it's quite an straights thing to see that all of the smaller parties have done better all of them across the board meaning people are migrating away from those two big mainstream parties that used to be called folks part-i in the in germany the parties of the masses they are shrinking to a size particularly the s.p.d.

where they hardly qualify anymore for that term that's a historic turning point for the s.p.d. and if we look at voter turnout right now the numbers that we're seeing is some of the five percent so that's an increase from the last election there's strong turnout in glaringly the message got through to many people this time your vote really counts because as we've said so. several times less turnout would have meant probably a higher share of the overall vote for those highly motivated mobilized a.f.d. far right are tending to be far right votes and therefore i think there was a strong impetus for many people to vote i talked to a couple of young people who hadn't yet cast their vote who definitely were going to the polls today so i think that may be part of what explains that that higher figure and that is a good thing for democracy no question about it a roach where we go you know image as my producer.

ok very good are we want to go back to the c.d.u. headquarters my colleague michele norris is standing by michelle i take it. yes with me now is elmo caus most who most people know as until recently the head of the foreign affairs committee of the european parliament you're still an m.e.p. you also last time around helped write that agreement between the social democrats and the c.d.u. for the government you don't look that likely to have to write such an agreement this time around what's your reaction to those first results coming in i think that is possible to have against such an agreement but it depends very much. this result make will it be a good part of it in the sort of democratic party leaders maglevs one ms thirteen percent that she can make a truce between. socialist and between are just so called to make a coalition and in a moment looks more like you do have a jamaican coalition what did the c.d.u. what did the german chancellor get so badly wrong look this isn't over all of the

smaller competitors came stronger and i think we should take it much more seriously to fight not to be closer to them to fight the nationalist to explain to our people which danger in many. sense is combined with such people and we have seen that is it would be the right approach this did the liberals the clearer that did. the greens to greens which had a much better result than expected and therefore i think. elections are won in the middle in the center and here we have to concentrate as and i hope our friends for the season will understand that too but we already heard from alexander gallant the leader of the or the the top candidate from the a.f.p. the far right if the party which is now entering parliament most likely in force with more than potentially more than thirteen percent that they will haunt the government at they would chase you that they are ask the c.d.u. under angela merkel to brace themselves. your response to that look we have so much

ground and self-confidence we have thirty years we have more than twenty percent more than this party and this believes we had that sense of nearly three times so much votes then this party and we will not be haunted hunted and to be will carry on our policy and mr garland will not. celebrate jump politics in the future this will be done by the parties in the sand ridge got. eighty five percent it's a nationalist at fifteen as i said eighty five so not be to be nervous we know that situation from the european parliament and you can that live with that. thank you very much and back to the studio brant all right michelle equipment there thank you very much well there we heard it a major official from the c.d.u. trying to put a positive spin on these exit numbers i want to take us now to share a lot of thoughts like colleague she is at the headquarters for the f.t.

and it's a lot if any party has a reason to celebrate tonight it would be the based on these exit poll numbers. oh and they are the f.d.a. is getting the party started here they are making that clear we've seen a lot of happy happy faces of members of the f.d.a. they are celebrating this result as a success for two reasons not only that their own numbers are so high but they also celebrating the fact that they think that they attribute it to themself that they have fractured the german political landscape that the numbers of the conservatives are so low they are attributing that to their strong anti-american campaign and a strong campaign against anglo-american refugee policy just a few seconds ago when the results were and now and the members were chanting a s d a d and the leading candidate alexandre gollum's took the stage here he said

slogans like we are taking germany back now if he was saying that they will pose a very tough opposition no matter what the government will look like they are planning on being an incredibly tough opposition they made that clear and he also said that they will fight on so it's going to be interesting times in in the german problem and so what if i could we have we've got a sound bite now. well from the chairman of the f.t. mr gallant let's take a listen. we don't well ok i'm sorry let me ask my producer where we're going right now. ok joe i excuse me there i thought we had a sound byte from the f.t. we don't so where do they go from here are they are they betting on being the the leaders in the opposition. that is at least their hope that the s.p.d.m.

the conservatives the social democrats and christian democrats will head into another grand coalition and that they're by as the third strongest party they could leave the opposition and probably amend which comes with a lot of privileges like opening the debate on the budget for example they've already said are the leading candidate alexandre galland just said in his quick speech that he gave a few minutes ago that they are going to try to push the political debate to what's a right that they are going to hold the established parties in the german paul human accountable is especially on their policies towards refugees and migrants and that they are going to benefit from the slogan to take germany back that is what he said in his speech we're expecting a few more speeches in the minutes to comment the a of d. to outline their plans for their time in the opposition so either we do not we do know have that sound bite from that mr gallon the chairman of the a.f.d. and he was. talking about people who call his party and members of his party nazis

take a listen. i'd say they apparently don't know what nazis are as a child i witnessed how my parents were afraid because my father was a friend of officers behind the attempt to assassinate hitler on july twentieth one thousand nine hundred forty four and i witness it all as a child and when you think of nazis it's concentration camps the holocaust secret police think it's. serious crimes it's ridiculous to equate a democratic party that just wants different policies with nazis. so ga we heard mr galen speaking there but in of that he this is the same gentleman who last week said that germans should stop feeling guilty for what their soldiers did in the second world war and start being proud so what is this this is double speak that we're getting from the leader of this party. absolutely and that is one

of the strategies of the right wing populous we've heard numerous times in the past so basically he was referring to commons for example by the german foreign minister who was said that nazis might be entering the hot off german democracy the german paul human which it looks like they are now so he was referring alexander got on the leading candidate of the a of d. was referring to comments such as these but yes you're right he's the one that last week said germany should not a tone for his past anymore that those times were over that we should be proud of the accomplishments of the german soldiers in the first and second world war at those are absolute no no topics in germany usually there is or there has been a strong consensus in germany on on these issues so it is a strategy of the f.d.r. it has been to basically provoke with these commas and afterword reject the notion

that those slogans that they are saying sound resounds as as nazi slogans so we've seen that not only with him but with a several or other members for example another one calling the holocaust memorial in berlin a monument of shame so this is one of the tragedies of the right wing populist yeah it's part of the double speak that we have seen throughout the campaign or correspond. at the headquarters with the. right the first project the results are in let's go to monica jones now she has got goes for monica and indeed i have and exit polls in the past have always proven to be quite accurate let's see if this is the same the case with the projected results now and they are actually quite quite similar to those exit polls we had the cd you see as you still at thirty two point seven percent of the vote the s.p.d.

slightly slightly gaining ground here twenty point two percent of the vote left party eight point nine percent of the vote the greens nine point four percent the f.t.p. still strong still back in parliament at this rate with ten point five percent the a.f.d. also still going strong and still for the first time in parliament with thirteen point four percent of the votes in terms of gains and losses it's quite clear that the biggest loser in terms of votes is under american c.d.u. c.s.u. minus eight point eight percent quite a loss here also the s.p.d. shedding votes five point five percent of the vote a left party slight gains green party also slight gains one percent up the f.t.p. stronger gains of course necessary because they were not in parliament in the last four years didn't make the five percent hurdle now they're back and the clearly in

parliament at this rate plus eight point seven percent what does this mean in terms of seats in parliament let's take a look obviously the strongest party despite the losses is still the c.d.u. c.s.u. and they will have two hundred and seventy seats so that the most of the seats the s.p.d. one hundred and thirty four seats of followed by the green party is sixty two seats left party fifty nine seats. f.t.p. with seventy seats the a.f.d. with eighty nine seats and more seats than those traditional small parties and in terms of coalition government because so far none of those parties does have the overall majority so we do look at another governing coalition here we need at least three hundred and sixteen seats starting with the c.d.u. c.s.u. because it is the strongest party they could of course join forces with the s.p.d.

there will be a repetition of the past four years that would give them a clear majority plus thirty five thirty five seats so that would be stable but we've already heard that is not the preferred choice on either side certainly not on the side of the s.p.d. the other possibility we also heard is the so-called jamaica coalition that would be c.d.u. c.s.u. and their preferred coalition partner the f.t.p. they are a tried and tested team they've done it before alone they can't do it not enough seats here but with the green party yes we could actually look for the very first time at a jamaica coalition plus thirty three seats that looks like a stable government at that and finally just to check if this is actually a possibility to rule out the c.d.u. c.s.u. all together and start looking at the s.p.d. they would have to join forces with the left party and with the green party and

this is the government that we have in the german capital at the moment in berlin but not enough so right now we are looking at two real possibilities of a governing coalition given the fact that the dea suggested they're not really into joining any government brant thank you very much if you are just joining us now. you're watching the w. news our special coverage germany decides and the first consequence is the first repercussions of what the voters have decided today are starting to be felt particularly at the headquarters of the social democrats that is where my colleague toma sparrow is standing by thomas we understand that the leadership of the social democrats have decided that they will go into the opposition there will be no more grand coalition. that's something else i agree brenda something that we're hearing here in the social democratic headquarters that they're not interested in another

version of the grand coalition we spoke to various members right here on they all agree that the correct path for the social democratic party in the next four years is to be in the opposition that has two major implications one they will be able to rebuild many of them were certainly not happy with the way things occurred in the last four years the second one they would be able to prevent the alternative for germany of becoming the largest party in opposition that's something else that many people here have told us so on the one hand obviously people worried about their own results on the other hand also worried about the result of the if the in trying to see how they can prevent them from becoming the third party in the german parliament as it is an amazing place to be right now when you consider the reach that the a.f.d. is having already in this election not only with this talk about this so-called

jamaica coalition with the c.d.u. and with the f.t.p. and with the greens but also what you're seeing there thomas is that the s.p.d. says we need to go into opposition and be the leading party because that's the only way we can keep the far right from becoming leaders of the opposition i mean the the consequences here this evening are more than significant. they are incredibly significant the consequences of rent if you see for decades the social democratic party here in germany was the workers' party and in a way the i.f.t. co-opted some of the of the speeches in that line that came from the from the s p d that's why the s.p.d. in particular hot trouble also among german workers in this election right now so from that perspective it is clear that for the s.p.d. is a very dark day indeed we'll have to hear what martin shows the leader of the social democrats says soon right here at the headquarters in berlin but i can assure you

he will not be very pleased and you know thomas for our viewers watching this i mean how can we best describe what the s.p.d. is considering or what they may have to do i mean it's almost like the nuclear option right they're going to go out of the government into the opposition but they're doing it to be a bulwark against the far right. well not only brant obviously that's one element but obviously it also is all about their own party it's also about trying to to reconstruct after four years where they were part of the grand coalition where they did indeed manage to push forward some of their proposals for example when it comes to the minimum wage but where they didn't get the credit where credit was in a way also taken away by chance and. conservatives didn't help the profile of the social democrats in the last four years and that's something that they will want to try and rebuild now in the opposition a big question is what the leadership will say what will say in this regard what

the strategy will be moving forward if indeed right here the next four years the s.p.d. will be the main party in the opposition ok so you stand by there. melinda what are we seeing happening here you see me scribbling notes on the strings one note to that particular conversation one of the things they need to do in opposition is start to modernize their voter base if you look at the average s.p.d. voter here she often tends to be a union affiliated person living in one of the more industrial areas of germany often in the industrial north or in the populous industrial state north run westphalia that basis is not broad enough to sustain what i was a third. party yes exactly if trump fodor's were all the republican party

had then they would be in trouble in national elections so that is one very important issue for the s.p.d. i think the other thing now is to start talking about what kind of changes could this mean for germany stance both domestically and internationally and just starting with the latter point the s.p.d. and the c.d.u. were all. often pretty close on foreign policy martin short sometimes tried to tease out differences during the election campaign but the fact is that the two parties were pretty much aligned on many things including for example letting in the the immigrants in twenty fifteen that was an area where in fact all of the parties in parliament supported the chancellor initially so we may see some real changes in germany's foreign policy posture if indeed the grand coalition gives way to what is called it this green yellow black coalition that reese for referred to

as jamaican meaning conservatives greens and business friendly f.t.p. we would all of our viewers who would see what we're looking at now are live pictures of the headquarters of the s.p.d. maybe we can go back to those live pictures and we're waiting for martin george the chancellor candidate to speak and maybe we can show you we've got images video of the reaction there of the s.p.d. members in the leadership when these first numbers came out maybe we can show those just to kind of but she visualize the impact that the numbers are having on this party. you know the. thing a lot of the fifty years out looking faces and thomas sparrow you were there you were watching this happen in real time you know you heard melinda's say one thing they need to do is they need to broaden their base and you know time and time again when you talk with people around the world about the political party system in

germany and they think of the social democrats they think of the workers' party they think of. occupations and jobs that come from the rust belt but that's not what people are talking about when you talk about the futures and the speedy. what do you say about this has to broaden its base and become a party for more than just the blue collar worker. i couldn't agree with you more there brant and what with melinda said just a few minutes ago in fact if you look at the campaign of the social democrats this whole year and that's something that we've covered from day one until now you can see that their slogan and position that they wanted to bring forward space on social justice on trying to reduce inequality and trying to focus on jobs trying to focus on pensions all of those issues that are indeed very important in germany but if you look at other statistics you will see that many people in germany in fact most people in germany feel that their economic situation is very good and that's

why they don't think there's a need for change in germany so i would say that one area in which the s.p.d. focus that area of social justice it might be important but it wasn't an area where they were able to really touch the german vote where the german voter would say this is exactly what we want to vote for another aspect that didn't play in martin shows his favor is that he wasn't able to differentiate himself so clearly from the chancellor as he would've liked to and that is something that they will also have to do in opposition try to build up their profile as a party in opposition try and build up their profile and the ideas that they want to bring forward and they can easily do that in opposition and not being part of a grand coalition where they think that they may be able to push things forward but where they also believe that the credit is not given to them thomas what about martin short himself moving forward is he going to remain. head of the party

or well i mean what are you hearing. well that's that's probably the big question now that something that he will probably address himself here they have been some top s.p.d. officials saying that there's no question that he will remain as the leader of the party but i mean it's very difficult for him to also do so when you when you think that this if the numbers are confirmed will be the worst result for the s.p.d. ever the worse result before that was twenty three percent in two thousand and nine the numbers that we're getting here around twenty percent this would be even worse than that twenty three percent in two thousand and nine and it will be very difficult for martin chose to say that he can continue as the leader of the of the s.p.d. but it's also important to say that when martin shows was elected as the leader of the s.p.d. he was done so with one hundred percent that was also a record here for the party i think he's coming right now so we will probably want to thank you listen to what he has to say there thank you very very beginning q how

much you were in this room working what you know martin short as the leader of the s.p.d. walking on stage and let's listen in to what the the he is about to say thank you both thank you had the right thank. you how. it was to thank you with the news you know what you know probably most of those in the comments thank you. we're going to assume in those. comments good evening.

the sound. and. you can also you know see you know when you're not going to come i had some. friends of social democracy. thank you thank you for the courage this is strength that you have expressed just now today is a difficult day it's a better day for social democracy i don't want to mention my words here we did not achieve our electoral victory after the last in the north rhine-westphalia and homeland where we thought we would win we've also not done what we wanted in the german elections as well but i want to thank you for the wonderful campaign that we let you know waged here. so many who supported us and

those who voted for us it was less than we had hoped but you must rest assured that we will use the number of votes that we have had to fight for our principles to fight for. tolerance and respect in the next term of office of the german government. and thank you i want to thank. you. thank you. are given out in one day and i want to thank your stars of the voters that. gave us their trust. and i want to thank the men and women who supported us all of those who were supporting us on the streets fighting for our election in late into the night and waging it on the internet in a way that we've never done before i want to thank you everybody here. there at the

headquarters who worked so hard but particular i want to thank all of the candidates the young candidates and older candidates and everyone who came to our rallies and supported. real suzy as i want to thank all of you and i particularly want to thank the young men the social democrats who worked all day all night they were out there on the streets. fighting for. the social democrats. going to. which was an answer to try to. get started i'm sorry. i know that. we are very quick to look for explanations for success and failure of individual parties but it's clear that we didn't manage to retain and expand on our traditional voter base even though we had so many social successes and fought for

them in the last term in office their men and women out here who were how did incredibly successful. policy in the last term not just they were responsible for these successes and we're proud of the achievements that they now have to get when we fought for them from the statutory minimum wage to social housing and fostering family nursing care successes pension the successes and same sex marriages marriage for all. this is not a good look at how it works particularly difficult for as is how strong the alternative for germany and it's the right wing extremists entering into parliament that is just shocking and no democrat can just continue with business as usual. over one million refugees taken into our country continues to divide our country.

and meant. great deal right. neighborly love was expressed but for many this was. something to be worried about not being managed. and conventions are traditional supporters of our society that i'm sure money is strong enough. it remains the main mandate of the social democrats to ensure social cohesion in our society to organize this and for social democracy it remains the case. and. thank. you so sure we did democracy it remains that we will continue to fight for democracy tolerant. from today. with the same passion. and i have to say when i see that right wing extremism it's not going to be enough

to have a clash and you're going to have to do everything we can train and stand for democracy in the face of this right wing extremist thank. you very much. if you're not. you're not to become involved in. the weeks and months ahead. to rethink. position our party. has. recently elected chair this social democratic party i feel it is my job to lead this process to do this together with the men. at the social democratic party.

this evening. both the. cooperation with the christian democratic union and the grand coalition. going to go over. the over . we're going to see can also be. the biggest comments yes. the biggest.

coalition this is. clearly has lost support in this election and there are a mentoring majorities as the forecasts show about going to be honest the previous you know. i'm going to matter has expressed her preference she wants to see a green liberal and christian democratic coalition we are in opposition to this. would be. the power of opposition. let me say this clearly. i wanted to replace the current chancellor and this is why i was not a minister and therefore i believe it is consistent and right and this is why i have recommended to the social democratic leadership that we. go into this current

government. as an opposition party. you have an incident we are in agreement and always have. that this is the right steps to take to be the strongest opposition party and the germans are as a part of the bundestag we will be able to take responsibility for our parliamentary him system for our country and social cohesion in our country so in the weeks to come we must work hard and try to work for the lower saxony said stefan while has. got real opportunities to leave that federal state so that's the next job next task and we must join our forces now to fight for this in the social democratic party of germany. it is important. that the results of this

vote frankly and clearly and make progress as a party with us and we're going to take the time necessary to do this. chair of the as a ph d. i will put all of my effort into working towards this since january more than twenty three thousand new members of the joined and in recent weeks. and in recent weeks there's been real enthusiasm among young people for our values for our goals we are the parts of progress and of social justice social justice remains the key condition for a good future for our country. and this is the foundation on which we are going to build a new beginning from tomorrow we will begin and begin. to change our bodies ladies and judgment. comrades friends guests let me conclude. by making

use of the following statement let me say that this party has experienced many bitter hours and this is one of them in the history of our party but that german social democrats particularly on the difficult days days in which the extreme right wing has reared its hari had we have shown that we know how to defend democracy in germany and we will continue to expand and build on this that remains our job we will focus on that thank you. thank you thank you we have been looking at the speech from the leader of the us pete martin short's there a bittersweet moment for the leader of the s.p. deal it's going out to thomas sparrow thomas you were listening as well and. admitting that the party didn't do what it needed to do to convince the voters to

give the party to give the party's candidates their support on this election day. grant i think that there are three outcomes of what we've heard just now by martin schultz one he will remain as leader of the party second he will do so from a position in the german opposition so there were cheers here you probably saw them there when when they said that the coalition with the c.d.u. and the c.s.u. is over the third element one that i found particularly important is that one of the main focus in the german parliament will try to be to fight the a f d the alternative for germany that's one of the goals that he himself mentioned just now there was also one of the goals that they had presented all along in the campaign in these last few months. and thomas let's look at this than and let's move the story forward so if he is going to stay as head of the party that's what we're seeing right now and they're going in the opposition what is they're going to mean

then for the other parties for example is the s.p.d. going to be as i said earlier the war against the far right a.s.d. in this constellation this new constellation that we're seeing emerge tonight. well the a.f.p. and that's one of their clear goals in parliament will try to move that debates to the right of the political spectrum and one of the goals that the s.p.d. could have leading the opposition in parliament is precisely to try and move those speeches those debates to the center or at least to the left of the political spectrum that's something that martin shows will probably try and do but that's not something that they will have to discuss with the membership of the party that's not something they can decide only on by themselves and they really want to discuss with all the members what their clear strategy will be in the next for you. well from what we heard just now it does seem clear that they will try and focus on

their role in opposition on the one hand to try and rebuild their own profile as we mentioned earlier on the other hand to try and reduce the profile of the alternative for germany thomas ferro a speedy headquarters on this historic election evening here in germany thomas thank you very much. you're watching the w.'s live coverage of the german elections germany decides polls have now closed and here is a reminder of what we know so far for women there are results conservatives with a comfortable lead but despite the celebrations they've taken a massive cut in support compared to the last election merkel's main challenger martin jolts of the social democrats has admitted to a crushing defeat results indicate the party's worst ever showing in a national election and the other big story of the night to the far right alternative for germany is on course to become the third biggest party in parliament in the build this dog that's according to preliminary results only of

course these are not yet the official results and we certainly want to highlight that again these are not the official results but things are moving quickly here. across the country here in berlin. one degree here at the big table with the so actually what we're what we're looking at right now is. a seismic shift in what where the voters are willing to give their support that's right and i'm seeing modernizing some german media here seeing some information on where some of this support came from both in terms of which other parties and i think we will get some graphics on that later on but initial trends show that nearly a million voters drifted away from the christian democrats from the chancellor's party to the f.t. that's a big number and i think that very much does represent that skepticism frustration and anger about the wave of immigration that came in two thousand and fifteen and

a sense that the government still hasn't dealt with it correctly and so that's one issue another issue i'm looking at a graphic here in a major german newspaper that says that in the east there were returns for the f.t. of up to twenty one close to twenty two percent twenty two percent of the vote. that is significantly higher than the share of the vote there for the social democrats for what used to be a mass party in germany so again a major shift of the tables and third point very briefly mr garland you talked about the fact that he sometimes speaks out of both sides of his mouth well in his own remarks now after seeing these initial numbers he said that we will hunt the chancellor and we will take our country back now we both have heard that expression before that was donald trump statement throughout the u.s. election campaign so clearly some pretty harsh rhetoric now coming from him with that very strong result as

a good tailwind. f.t.p. ok we want to go to the f.t.p. headquarters the head of that party now mr. opposite poles to the f.t. . you know yes. because there isn't. a. party that thinks in terms of racism if you want and xenophobia. and to fortress europe and all the rest of it this is something we need to combat so i would like to thank everybody who has made this evening possible first of all all

of our voters all of us supports. this dunka. junko. bank over sixty thousand members. really demonstrated strong nerves and a strong commitment to the last four years so thank you thanks to all of. you down. and i don't like to thank you and i mean it i want to thank my friends from the committee thank you your great c.m. it was always great to work with you. on. the not too early. for that. oh my.

my my family are my friends. who had to do without me such a lot. in the run up to this election. right now. being given by the head of the f.t.p. there mr lennard you heard it right there. and we're going to go over now to see you had quarters there is the german chancellor angela merkel as we said things are moving quickly right now on this election night here in germany two thousand and seventeen let's listen in to what the chancellor of germany has to say i'm going to map. the sofa.

for the end of. time ladies and gentleman. there's no need to mention here we would have liked to have had a slightly better result than socially clear but i think we mustn't forget. that it's been a particularly challenging term of office that we've just concluded which is why i am so pleased with you that we can proceed with the strategic target of our election campaign we got where we wanted to be we want to be the strongest power as the c.d.u. c.s.u. it is now down to us to form a government and with against us no government can be formed the for. the for. the for.

the photo so. yes it is. there live and i would just first of all i want to thank all of the voters who put their trust in us i want to thank all of our election helpers particularly connected seventeen zero and the young and. union members but everyone else involved thank you so much you know it was a pleasure fixed sure a fixed . well that's religion of into thing is no and i'd also like to say that after twelve years of being responsible for the

government the result we had today is really not something you can take for granted and naturally there's a challenge facing us in the future and that is the fact that the alternative for germany has made it all into a parliament we will have to conduct an. in-depth analysis because we want to win back the voters have voted for the entity by solving their problems by taking on board their concerns their years in some cases but also by demonstrating good policy making.

and you know how many guns and weapons you can hear in that recent months we have fought for germany that we want to live in that we live in well and now we know that we need to set the course to ensure that in five and in ten years time it's still the case we need to ensure. prosperity. to ensure what we make is what we need to have a good strong country the urban union and keeping this together having a strong europe all this is just part of it and since migration of us big combat we also need to combat the reasons that make people leave their homes we have to find legal ways of coming to germany and we need to ensure internal security as well domestic security in germany people expect that if they want to live in freedom here and in the next weeks. months to come these will be issues much on our mind but today is a day where we can start off and say we have

a mandate to take on responsibility and we will do so with all of our strengths but we'll take our time to debate this with our other partners and i look at all our options thanks once again for this wonderful election campaign it was really a pleasure thank you thank you. thank you. thank you thank. god thank you thank you i don't know how many really i do see that when i see all of you here in front of me i don't think we have to worry about the young people in our country. you.

know so i'm going to let me just tell you. for the rest of the evening i will be. on in the t.v. debate so i am trying to take fifteen on the other lead candidates and then we're going to celebrate and tomorrow we'll get down to work thank you thank you frank. if you're just joining us you're watching d.w. news our special coverage of germany decides the election there we were just looking at live pictures from the c.d.u. headquarters where the german chancellor angela merkel saying yes her party and she herself wishes that the result had been better today but at the end of the day they remain the largest part or party in germany and they will be the ones to determine what. comprises the next german government let's go now to the headquarters of the

alternative for germany you apartheid your idea was listen if any of the party. voters. thank you very much for this. wonderful time in this election result we didn't expect this result. i live i'm putu all of. volunteer help the members of this party for this great election campaign. we've really got the results listening thanks on behalf of alexander. and york my turn as well. yeah mine vale our talk because now the voters have given us. a mandate.

we intend to take it on you want to do you. millions of voters have voted for us they have given us that their joy and sound bytes brought constructive possession of the funds. and we will get it ever done. and i live. in the stocks up go out and i can eat all of the direct candidates all of the m.p.'s and i want to say i thank you for the election campaign and have traveled all through the country. and. so this party during the election campaign and take this you have been minutes or trusted with with all due you know humanity void. trying to vote your minister was elected into the

nine. bundestag. had all and only has to go on and on myself. prepared to take these apart if this is an annoyance they wanted to take. into the night i'm not sure i mean i have to. work as so. sure that germany. dana bill in the future moving forward that's what we were voted in for thank you thank you. say asked about it the first thing we're going to do the mouse. dance and the way i noticed is another t.v. show downs in the office reports and wanting this election what we find is that the

other parties are always talking about meaning personalities. was voted in because of the position that we represent and the people who have shown us their trust are going to get delivering on their promises we are going to initiate. an inquiry committee to scrutinize i'm going to america. does this gun states idea to me this committee is going to look at where this woman would have broken the law that was part of what we were elected to do. is in. we came to stay and we will stay so you take the position that has been entrusted t.-o.

with all of the military and care and all future m.p. last be aware of all time at all times of your responsibility aware of what we owe this country and the voters. you have given us their trust be aware of what you owe them the fun we will generate on our promises thank you. ok you were just listening there to the victory speech if you will from the f.t. the alternative for germany celebrating the fact that it looks like they are going to be the third largest party in the new german parliament we want to go now to see a lot of pots she is our correspondent there at the headquarters with the a.f.p. so i want to ask you you know melinda and i have been listening to what's being

said tonight by the a d n a one of it sounds like it's coming from a book that could have been written by donald trump what struck me just now is that we heard the a.f.d. wants to start in official inquiry too and i'm quoting here to find out where the german chancellor angela merkel has broken the wall what more do you know about that and that's news to us here. yes that is what everybody have been saying let me first mention yes it sounds very much like donald trump the man leading candidate alexander gallant was saying we want to take our country back we want to take germany back in his victory speech that is something that is very resounding of the u.s. president donald trump campaign and the podium mentary encrypt inquiry that is something that we've heard from a number of a.m.d. members including the leading candidates tonight in interviews that we thought with

them they are saying that they want to leave this inquiry against chancellor angela merkel and look into her well character into her policies regarding the refugee crisis that the f.d.a. has been strongly campaigning against safe. ran on an anti-american anti migration platform so they want to leave this in korean inquiry and look into it and call humans in general and opposition in general and opposition party is able to do their acts or lead an inquiry but the question is if they are going to find other parties that are going to help them out to to bring this inquiry into place and to be honest it looks right now like they the a d. is going to be shunned out by all other parties and column and it's going to be very unlikely that they are going to find another party that is going to support such an inquiry so they are pretty much alone there with with that idea and with that it wouldn't be possible to meet this inquiry in parliament and and so on to

explain to us what it means if the social democrats if they're going to go into the opposition and they would be the largest party in. opposition then what does that mean for the a.s.d. in terms of their ability to effect change in their ability to affect legislation in the german parliament are they going to have muscle to go behind the wild voice that they have. the f.d.a. was definitely hoping that the s.p.d. would form another grand coalition with the conservatives and so that they would be the strongest opposition party right now it doesn't look like that looks like there might be a coalition such as jamaica with the greens and the liberals and many members that i talked to here are quite disappointed to be a of the members are quite disappointed because they would not be as they were hoping the strongest opposition party being the strongest opposition party brings

with the privileges for example of having the those the beginning of the budget debate they can open that in problem and they would lose these privileges and only would be the second strongest party so the members that i've talked to have been quite disappointed about these well latest developments that we've we first seen coming out of this election tonight. our correspondent there at the headquarters of the a.f.p. the alternative for germany party should want to thank you very much. we're going to take you now to the headquarters of the christian democrats the c.d.u. the party of the german chancellor angela merkel my colleague michelle. there good evening to you michelle. hi there brant. that we just saw the german chancellor speak here and she tried to sound upbeat to what appears to become the second worst result of the c.d.u.

since the end of world war two it's of modern day germany so this is really no glossing over that she said they'd hoped for a better result but on the plus side that there was now a mandate to form a government and that nobody could form a government against their will quite clearly she tried to mention the a.f.d. as little as possible but saying that it clearly posed a challenge that the c.d.u. now had to listen to that to analyze but frankly we already know from the polling that came in today for the reasoning why. the a.f.d. comes out so strong that one million voters appear to have changed compass and silly to the far right if the party and that clearly is something that the german chancellor will face in the day to work now and that's also something that she will have to face in her daily work in parliament we heard from saw a lot of just a few moments ago the a.f.d.

will not be able to chair the powerful the mighty budget committee it will not have the first right of reply when there are debates the social democrats will most likely hold the a.f.d. at bay that for the german chancellor at the same time the c.d.u. knows it has lost dealy to the f.d.a. and will now have to change policy to win back those voters who clearly gave the c.d.u. a dressing down at the ballot box. day. in the show do you get the sense that people there are aware of the gravity of the results that we have so far mean we're talking about a million voters why grady away from the c.d.u. going to the a f d that certainly that's really not in any stretch of the imagination a victory for the cd you. know they know they won they're

celebrating that they won but they know that this is clearly not a victory it's a second worst result at the same time they believe in angola macko angela merkel was the big pulling power for voters that's what a lot of the polling shows that much of the reason for people to actually take that box with the c.d.u. still was on the american at the same time her open arms migration policy quite clearly was the reason the key reason why voters decided to put their vote with the a.f.d. with that far right party and it shows us that there really is a whole segment of voters here who feel that the c.d.u. didn't listen to them many we also saw polling that. actually hope that they could or would welcome the ability to vote for the system party the c.s.u. in bavaria why do i mention that well the c.s.u. has criticized the german chancellor throughout those past two years at one point

threatening although an empty threat it was to bring her before the constitutional court over open arms policy on migration and now we hear the a if t. and this is where the where the lock her up kind of sound from the trump campaign starts coming in for all of us who covered those elections the f.d.a. is actively already in these discussions in the media here looking for partners to put the german chancellor. to hold her to the investigative power of a special committee in the german bund a stock they've already been rebuffed also by the free democrats we now see that that was all rhetoric over the past two years but these will be very interesting times in these very testing times for the german chancellor and we will see a different kind of policy coming out of germany i'm going to tackle still is german tonsil but she has to have new partners there will be different concessions

to make to free democrats or to the green party than there were to the social democrat yeah definitely a different type of politicking if you will that will have to take place now after this election that is for sure michelle equipment there at the headquarters of the christian democrats here in berlin thank you very much. and if you are just joining us you are watching the w.'s live coverage of the german elections polls have now closed here's a reminder of what we know so far it is just about ten minutes after seven p.m. here in germany preliminary results showing the americans conservatives with a comfortable lead but despite the celebrations they have taken a massive cut in support medical admitted that she had hoped for a better result her main challenger martin jol so you see right there of the social democrats has conceded a crushing defeat results indicate that the party is more stuff ever showing in a national election and the far right alternative for germany is on course to be

the third biggest party in the german parliament the boldest talk all of those preliminary results only want to remind you that these are not yet the official results but those are the numbers that the parties are going ahead with. all right let's go over now to the talk table my colleague peter craig is standing by peter. thanks very welcome back to the talk table we're joined by a third pundit in the meantime that is tossed bennett director of the global public policy institute think tank based in berlin and the head to school of governance he's on the faculty there judy in europe is still with me all three have been yearning i can tell you have been yearning to have a say as we've been listening to these results coming in in the speeches the stages you will thank you for me it's the biggest stress test i think that german democracy has faced at least in my lifetime and we need to smarten up and what i've heard so far this evening i'm not entirely sure that we're ready to deal with the

because most of the if the politicians and voters and members are not nazis and we shouldn't call them nazis and mr gold on this very write about this this is also not just a copycat of because they lack the economic protectionism that is at the heart of trumpets and the sovereignty take our country back against islamic immigration that's what they share with trumpets and that poses a big challenge to the social democrats who had a crushing defeat but also to the christian democrats and in four years you will see i think that the challenge for mrs merkel or make mrs merkel's party is much stronger because right now she profited from a lot of voters who are kind of liberal left leaning who supported her for her responsible foreign policy stance and also for her refugee policy which you know they share in terms of values now it's entirely unclear in four years when the social democrats have a new candidate and make an offering and the c.d.u. may move to the right whether these voters will come back to this to the c.d.u.

at the same time is unclear whether they see you can vote win back the war a soul both parties really need to smarten up the liberal democracy and the is a big stress to not for just for anglo-american but for everybody who believes in liberal to modify or into the very structures of german post-war politics it's a stress test for those exactly in. if you look at the results we mentioned that briefly before in east germany you have an average of all probably a of about more than twenty percent for the alternative for germany there add to that almost twenty percent that voted for the left party both parties are not one hundred percent happy with the system of liberal democracy that we're living in so you see the shallow roots of liberal democracy and the discontent particularly in these that we need to learn to address to speak to those and it will not be enough to call these people nazis we also need to ask the years d. what are you doing about education what are you doing about new jobs and so on we

need to kind of test them on the on the other issues that people care about today it's not good enough to call the season dismissed. if you want to put to call the other parties actually but as i said earlier before tossing came onto the show the f.t. is not a monolithic party at this the first thing and and secondly what is very interesting about this election is that the opinion polls got the c.d.u. c.s.u. wrong right up to the very last poll it's hovering thirty seven thirty eight one hundred thirty nine but there was one pull the door for it down to thirty one total two and at the last minute huge disaffection to the f.t. i think because merkel didn't reach out this the best thing secondly the stress test has hasn't been touched upon linda if the air the democrats tried this next four years is going to digitalisation going to be a huge change the demographic challenges and this button texturing election

campaign the work the new challenges facing germany have yet to begin the interesting thing is we had this if the results under economic conditions that couldn't be better were just discussing about the surplus in the budget how to distribute it unemployment is not a major factor that people are worried about imagine if these smartening up economic crisis hits they become a little bit more protection. they have the same welfare promises as mrs le pen for example makes right now they're kind of in favor of welfare cuts actually but imagine they kind of took on some of this kind of left sounding economic rhetoric i think we're in for quite a ride there in the coming years we saw a bizarrely delighted and relieved being heartily applaud applauded by her party faithful it seems strange because i think from from this very moment from this evening people are already going to be speculating about who comes next and thus she is already surely a lame duck facing all those challenges that you have been talking about and the a

s d. lame duck. no no no it's too early. it's mechelle wants to remain chancellor for the forseeable future and she said it several interviews she will see this job through whatever how long this job loss and i should say revealing it depends on her health as well but she now has to bring political stability to germany in the form of bringing the free democrats and the greens just imagine the internal rancor between these three parties who gets finance minister gets for ministry at the end of the day these three parties want to power but if they want power they have to be very careful what brought them into the situation meaning divorces to disaffected from to see through you i thought it was also a bit of a misplaced happiness that the city you showed there i mean day out of body dead last year most so most is fifty seven this is at least at the s.p.d. you could see that they really did a day last

a day really show that they lost i think you know also you know bar that if he is also successful has also to do with people are be turned away from center politics like we see everywhere else in europe i think the refugee crisis you know people have the feeling i was never able to vote about this i was never part of this whole process and it's not pure phobia over what may be a of the great what it's like a feeling that the thirty percent of the of the people don't even vote anymore and in germany is a political dissent gente that has evolved over the last twenty years not only in germany in the netherlands and in france as well and now we see these disenchanted voters picking up their you know their momentum and vote for the a.f.p. . i think america is not a lame duck she's a sitting duck and she'll have a very uncomfortable time also from her competitors within our own party and varia there are elections in bavaria next year and mr kept quiet this year is georgia

trying up the volume on on mrs merkel but mrs merkel i think put on a. phase because she sees a historic mission in her fourth term she wants to see through i think and i hope that germany modernize is economically and in terms of digitization her team has made plans plans for that and she has been so obviously she has plans for europe i mean we haven't talked about eurostar at all and that will be very interesting in this jamaica coalition though there are some you know all three parties are generally pro european but when it comes down to euro zone reforms and the plans that mr mccall is pursuing and will unveil next tuesday there's huge disagreement and i think the negotiations will be protected and protracted really going for a substantial part there is a i'm so glad you're on their red line is that they're not. transfer payments into a euro zone about. no banking union i think on their lines but you know politicians cross their own line several several times it depends i think also what how mccomb

which is how to miracle over the next couple of weeks by the way this would be very long as you say a protracted negotiations secondly it depends on who's going to be the finance minister this is very very important and terribly we have to hear what mrs merkel herself once i mean she hasn't been particularly candid or open about what kind of europe and relationship to she does want that macro and the other the other big member states about the future direction of this is really important. and why are we not talking more about the a.f.p. earlier in their evening we were saying if they do make it into the bundestag this will be a historic moment in a negative sense for german democracy the financial times wrote. it off cocktail loped at the very heart of german democracy strewn with the whole thing about the next coalition in negotiations for the next coalition so it's business as usual is partly business as it is partly business as usual various we need a reasonable government that can govern from the center and we have a majority for that so that's the good news so this is not correct that this is not

trump what's happening in germany and we should kind of. that's important the same time business as usual as mrs merkel said and mr schorr said cannot continue and we need to find a way to reach out to the voters the disaffected voters of the not all thirteen percent are neo nazis or extreme right wing. individuals some of them were just unhappy with the things. the way things are going there culturally disaffected and mrs merkel for them embody is this because not only did you pursue the refugee policy she also said that islam is a part of germany and that makes a very much a target of those who think we should have a more homogenous germany you know brave yourself brace yourself for some very tough cultural debates on the role of islam in germany and that will be very tough and very inconvenient. for the millions of muslims that live in this country and

reopening of the politics of history mr gulen previewed this last week when he said we should be proud of our soldiers also and in the second world war and we should do away with this cult of guilt the i have to say it's all these things will be will be opened up solid it won't be business as usual but at the same time germany as the biggest country and the economically strongest country in europe has a responsibility to pursue a constructive. we can't just say we're inward looking just because we have a fifty almost fifteen percent extreme right wing and this country yes but this victory of the. office says is that the especially the right flank of the party who have been in a major discussion with the with the with the more moderate part of the party they have dominated especially the last part of the election campaign especially galant and now we see that in this last face the deal was most successful so this struggle within the party i think is going to be in favor of the right flank because they

can sort of show to their voters with this election result like look we are we know what our voters want this is the course we're going to set out so i think in the next coming months the f.d.a. will have will struggle in what could that mean in practical terms in there in the f.d.a. is judy said earlier is not a monolithic party and there's there's so much backstabbing going on that i'm a board of stories for beginners compared to what's going on in the year i mean we didn't see for example the leader of the f.d.a. fall completely she wasn't even on t.v. because she's kind of being mocked by the three people you saw taking center stage tonight and there's going to be a big debate to what degree it should move to the extreme cater to the extreme right there's a lot of kind of bush people i mean after all it started out as an end to your old party in favor of bringing and getting our monetary sovereignty back and there's still some some left and there's so much personal rivalries being fought out so the f.t. may well implode also in the coming years but we can't bank on it and we need to

confront it confront it head on one not sure what to do and i only say that this vote for the air is actually very very worrying and. we can blame america for not speaking out strongly enough about it but it does say a turn in part of germany's push for history frankly it's a new chapter and it can't be liked under the carpet anymore ok thanks very much for those observations we're going to go back now to monica who's got the latest figures. indeed i have new projected results and they show that the figures we got so far begin to solidify we have the city to see as you gaining slightly from previous figures but still somewhat disappointing results here at thirty three point one percent s.p.d. at twenty point four percent so still not not

a very good result for the social democrats of martin short left party and green party both hovering around nine percent give or take the f.d.p. still going strong ten point four percent which means they're clearly above the five percent hurdle and they will be in the german wonder stock as will be the f.t. currently at thirteen point two percent in terms of gains and losses the biggest loser here again clearly under americal c.d.u. c.s.u. party and we already heard that a million votes left the c.d.u. to move to the a d. in percentage that is minus eight point four percent the social democrats lost five point three percent left party and green party sort of stable green party gaining slightly more gains though with the free democrats five point six percent

and again the biggest winner here the a d. plus eight point five percent when we look into the german born a stark and what this means in how the seats will be distributed among those parties it's clear that the strongest party will get most seats in this case the c.d.u. c.s.u. we have two hundred nineteen seats followed by the s.p.d. with one hundred and thirty five seats the left party fifty nine seats here in pink the green party sixty two seats similar with the f.t.p. sixty nine. seeds and the a f d the absolute newcomer with eighty seven seats that's the blue block here at the far end so quite a strong outing there but we will get more numbers as the even involved but right now it looks like this is definitely a tendency that we will be able to think and work with brant thank you very much monica. well and. if we're looking at the constellations year that is

appearing. is there any silver lining in this for democracy in germany we've been reading time and time again particularly in the german media that this is a challenge for german democracy no question no question about it and nobody should be complacent and yet there are a number of factors where if we say it's a stress test for german democracy there are a number of factors we can look at and say this is a test that this country's political system probably can handle and let me just list a few of them starting out with the election turnout we saw today there a high compared to what many people had been concerned about seventy five percent was the last number that we saw that's a good deal higher than last time around the only four percent higher than in the last national election and you know what more than eighty six percent of the

electorate did not vote for the f.t. now over time there's been a lot of discussion is there sort of an upper limit on the a.f.d. support in the german political system as a whole some people have thought it might play out at just about the number that we're seeing here this evening this party isn't in power yet now the downside is they're going to have a powerful platform in parliament for getting their messages across that will also change political discourse in parliament but the other side is that is a lot of light shed on them that is going to be a lot of searching criticism of research by the media whether it reaches some of those protest voters or not is an open question we don't know yet but that cuts both ways that parliamentary presence and the fact that they have a platform there more factors economic conditions in this country right now. they

are good that means that many people as we've said before eighty percent say conditions are good many people are not so strongly disaffected that they are perhaps going to be leaning toward supporting this party on personal economic grounds there is a level of socio cultural concern and perhaps sense of precariousness that may of course generate continuing support and then perhaps just a couple of other things and historically germany's experience in the last century two world wars perpetrating the perpetrator of the holocaust has tended to inoculated against extremism i said at the outset of the show many people like uncle america because she's non polarizing germans don't tend to like a lot of rhetorical bombast a lot of polarization in politics i think that inoculation still

does hold for a lot of voters maybe not all but i don't think we can say that that inoculation has totally worn off so i think that is out there and then my last point would simply be when we have a pretty high level of political debate in this country if you watched some of the debates of the various representatives of the parties they were in-depth they were substantive it wasn't a lot of populistic. name calling and i think also that would argue for the fact that this system probably can master this challenge but people need to be ready to work hard at it. for it to survive and to prosper has to have a divided society of some sort doesn't mean that that's the platform right yes that's the platform and i think like many. right. nationalist

parties they talk a lot about economic aspects they say immigrants are making your life harder you're not getting the support on housing you can't find an apartment because they're here and so on but there's another level sometimes it's spoken of openly sometimes not which is all about racism and xenophobia and that's the kind of polarization that you are talking about so that obviously is going to be a part of the political debate with the debate with this party in parliament that it's going to need to be very much out in the open a lot of light shed on those sentiments and a lot of pushback a lot of pushback but we still cannot underestimate the shift to the right the worst that we've seen in all parties particularly the coalition partner with the sister party of the c.d.u. the c.s.u. and if you look at the numbers there if. we take the numbers so far as fact the

c.s.u. has its worst result so it's nine hundred forty you know in bavaria i mean that this unbelievable so what are they going to do out of this they are going to be frustrated they're going to feel insecure and they are going to go to the chancellor and say you know what we were right and we need to be tougher on immigration issues and our idea that we need a limit on immigrants. particularly the kind of immigration that we've seen from north africa from the middle east that idea is absolutely correct and we need to be pursuing that there will be a lot of pressure from the sister party it is a more conservative version of the chancellor's christian democrats she's going to have a hard time keeping the they've had a sort of a temporary ceasefire during the election of her hand i think that is likely to come very much back and it will mean. will the german chancellor have been in terms

of pushing back and standing her ground on these if he heard your sister or her sister party but also let's see if this jamaica the so-called jamaica coalition actually comes to pass it's not a match made in heaven it's not a natural fit but it's in no one's interest for it to collapse and for new elections i didn't think that right so here's the thing first of all that's explain again what had to make a coalition is because this is going to be new to lots of our viewers german parties have colors automatic it will end up being told now we're going to go to. the attorney for germany headquarters show a lot of parts there is going to talk with. the a.f.p. let's go to that right now. yes hi brenda i'm here with vital she is one of the leading candidates of the a.s.g. and the interview is going to be in german with a translator vital. to the. well one of the

mandates of the parliament is scrutiny of the government the parliament the legislative has to scrutinize the executive and in recent years this is not been done and this is why we've been elected into the parliament now because without us it will no longer be possible to avoid this christian they were able to just rubber stamp policy through without having properly debated them in the parliament without having of the parliament called for this kind of scrutiny this just doesn't go hand in hand with democracy idea yet even if you know what i'm saying hasn't you also had your membership called an investigation committee inquiry committee and so i'm going to matter what you're trying to achieve with this committee as we have often in the top part now well you need to have partners who are supporters that'll be the first test to the understanding of democracy of the other parties in the parliament. and i hope that we will be able to get

a part of islam and order because otherwise that less big volume is about the understanding of democracy of the other parties and this inquiry committee will have the clear mandate of looking at infringements of the law that i'm going to macro has committed to one example the refugee policy has no legal basis it wasn't even discussed in the parliament you would simply can't do that sort of thing aside undermining parliamentarians which is why we are where we are speaking about politics i am talking about refugee policy and one of the things on your platform is that you want to get rid of a right to asylum which is you know right for so long for refugees in germany once you. want. get rid of it we want to know. which is also the program to see to you it was in ninety one and we don't really know what happened it's a party that just got no core anymore they have to trade their own core values so it's absolute madness today we're calling what the c.d.u.

called for thirty years ago. and you have to do this otherwise you have a situation right next day where if you have a right to asylum that is actionable in a law that means that every sign seeker who didn't get proof can go to court and i quote to collapsing the thousands of new judges who have to rule on these cases talking and it's court there is talking about think years. that couldn't be done. for seven years or to take them seven years to get through this the courts of collapsing and if we continue with this it's irresponsible policy they'll be a major change here and we really want this to be an alternative for germany and we don't want that we want to go back to. the run up to the election and we heard that there are some very bright when an extremist and radical wings to your party how

you keep them under control. through first of all we should say. to our electoral program program covers political feelings and action and what's being debated still have. things that i can't necessarily always support but we will see how this parliamentary group works in the parliament and i'm very confident thank you very much. just one of the leading candidates of the new comments and polly meant of the d. they are urging for a parliamentary inquiry against anglo american and her refugee policies to you brant all right there at the headquarters of the alternative for germany thank you very much i want to go now to my colleague michele. c.d.u. had quarters here in berlin is that where we're going. ok.

fluid even a melinda let's get back to this conversation we were just a little bit earlier about the chance was starting to tell her just exactly her bargaining power right now i mean what can she do how much leverage that she have with this so-called jamaica coalition if it does actually come into being and i was about to explain once again what the jamaica coalition is just so our viewers are getting is that this german parties have colors color for the christian democrats is black color for the business friendly f.t.p. the free democratic party liberals in the english parlance is yellow and the greens are green green so that is the jamaican for the colors of the jamaican flag and that's why germans cottage make a coalition the chancellor's leverage is not enormous at the moment with the s.p.d. definitely going into the opposition this is her only option if she can't make a coalition like that work then barring some true miracle like the left party

governing together with with her and some other party it's it's going to require new elections and that is a result surely no one wants that means those two potential coalition partners the greens and the free democrats do have some leverage and they're already playing their hand if you look at what their leaders are saying right both of them have said look we're not going to be easy to get here we're going to play hard to get we think that this is a tough kind of a coalition to sell to our party basis and therefore we are to our core supporters and therefore we are definitely going to want to see our programs put into place and we can perhaps talk in more detail later about what that could mean but there are some areas of potential overlap that i see we've all been saying we need to see the german political leadership concentrate on modernizing this economy on getting it ready for some. very tough test that's going to face in future so focused on

digitalisation that's something both the greens and the liberal free democrats have talked about the chancellor has sort of paid lip service to it hasn't done much about it the past four years that could be an area where they could all agree where it's going to be quite tough is europe the f.d.p. has had a lot of tough things to say about europe now possibly that was tactics they may have been trying to get some of the euro skeptic voters on to their side because the party the f.t. started out as a euro skeptic party and made this shift to the right to become an anti migrant party so maybe that's what was behind that maybe the head of the democrats christian lynn will soften his tone but right now it would be hard to see a lot of room for agreement on the european union policy and that's very important particularly for the christian democrats also important for the greens they are a very pro europe party so that's where we're going to see days and days of music

in the liberals very busy with mr from the they've been very adamant about the fact that they do not want to pursue. harmonization finances in the european union euro bonds for example it is for them a total taboo and these are not taboos it's a seriously for the c.d.u. would for the german chancellor she is at least willing to entertain this she has left the door open and there's been a lot of thought that once this election was over she would finally be able to go to the french president emmanuel mccaw and say ok i'm onboard with some of the things you want we can now really talk about a finance minister for the e.u. as a whole and we can talk about more fiscal integration although she's tried to leave the door open to not doing as well but that is definitely one of the areas where the f.t.p. would say wait a minute we don't know that we want to go there. you know the more we talk the more here the we've got this lame duck chancellor well. you know she's got some tough

work to do but she is a pragmatist let's not forget that she is very good at adapting to necessities and some of this that they may watch particularly in regard to modernization of the economy are things that she might like to do if she didn't have the finance minister. right behind her saying we need to that balanced budget maybe there's a little more room for investment if one of those two parties gets the finance ministry another big big question mark the liberals the free democrats have almost no politicians with experience they have back bench is really really is very very light that will also be a challenge all right linda with polls now closed reactions online are starting to roll in and it's perhaps no surprise. but let me do this there we go and those surprise that these drawing this response is in regard to the alternative for germany's showing called last night from our social media desk is here to tell us

more good evening to you karl so how are people outside germany responding to the showing of the a d.j. . now good evening brant i mean this is of course big news here in germany we've been talking about it on air it's also now big news internationally even many politicians in european countries we're talking about other populist politicians they're sending out their congratulations already to the f.t. for these strong preliminary showings and we can start off in france congratulations coming in from marine le pen she is of course the leader of the far rights national front she says congratulations to our allies for their historic result it's a new symbol of the awakening of the european people you can go to the netherlands this is it gets villagers he's going to either of the netherlands far right party for freedom and he of course congratulates the a.f.d. here as well and just one word we want to go to the chairwoman of the a.f.p.

herself pay tree she really is exploding with excitement brant on twitter she writes the impossible has come true germany has experienced an unprecedented political earthquake and she says let's do this in fact the a.f.p. is doing it they're really ready to roll here take a look within minutes of this first exit poll the party appears to already created a new twitter account it's called the a.f.p. in buddhist tog there is no tweets there yet but the a.f.d. official count is following this new twitter account brant and top candidate alice vital is also a follower so certainly celebrating across europe at least in terms of the other far right parties and they're already congratulating even now with these first results coming in what about initial reactions from voters here in germany karl. yeah i mean it seems you know everyone is kind of watching these exit polls come in they're watching along with us as we heard you know many people did vote for the f.t. but a majority of people did not and many of those are speaking out online and there's

a lot of emotions about this strong showing for the a.f.p. want to show you a couple of them here these are voters in germany and one says you know i feel so ashamed of being german right now what a sad day in german history kind of echoing those sentiments here we have another voter who says you know i've talked to my grandparents earlier who still cannot hear the word nazi without flinching and now i have to explain this referring to a far right party now in germany with such a strong showing a you know they have the supporters of course they're celebrating this online as well but you know this was not a surprise the the polls in the months leading up to this vote had the a.f.d. and double digits mostly i think this new political reality starting though to sink in now for many voters right here in germany. calling us from our social media desk thank you very much carol if people talked about a boring campaign they certainly cannot talk about a boring outcome of a campaign in the book in the monica very much what we predicted about the opinion

polls said and the latest to projected results are in key to sort of solidifying what we've seen earlier this evening we have the strongest party which was expected to be the strongest party anglo-american c.d.u. c.s.u. currently at thirty three percent of the vote so slightly slightly gaining in the course of this evening the same goes for the still current coalition partner the s.p.d. currently at twenty point eight so maybe it'll even break the twenty one percent mark not that it makes a big difference because martin shields already said they're no longer available in order to enter into a governing coalition they want to go into a position the left party at eight point seven percent the greens at nine percent so both hovering around the nine percent mark and greens possibly quite possibly in the new government because as we've heard already this is the only option machall

to enter a jamaica coalition which of course includes the tried and tested coalition partner for the c.d.u. c.s.u. namely the f.t.p. currently at ten point five percent and then there is the far right a d. comfortably entering parliament for the very first time at thirteen point three percent of the votes gains and losses let's have a quick look at that and as we've heard already there was quite some migration there of voters especially from the c.d.u. c.s.u. both the c.d.u. the big party of angela merkel and the smaller sister party the c.s.u. in bavaria losing lots of votes minus eight point five percent here also the s.p.d. shouting quite. substantial amount of votes yet minus four point nine percent the left party and the greens slightly gaining bigger gains naturally for the f.t.p. back in parliament after being out of parliament for the last four years and again

strong gains for the fifty point plus eight point six percent a brief look at what this means for the seats in the new parliament because there are plenty of seats to hand out a total of six hundred seventy one. the most either go to the biggest party of course there will be the c.d.u. c.s.u. two hundred eighteen that is the black part melinda explained it's honestly the color scheme of our german political party system and we have the red part here the one hundred thirty eight seats for the s.p.d. the pink of violet was sort of dark pink magenta colored let's call them the left party fifty eight seats here the green party sixty seeds the. left all the f.t.p. that's the yellow ones here in the front with sixty nine seats and the a.f.d. the blue on the far end with eighty eight seats so that's

a nice mix and suddenly something to discuss print all right on it thank you very much we're in the process of digesting those numbers i want to go now to the headquarters of the weft party my colleague is standing by there good evening to you on your people have been saying very much about the left party tonight and if the left party were a member of the social democrats tonight it would be a completely different story in terms of results what that. i don't really understand what you're aiming at rand left he was sharing when their results came up because they was they gained some points but at the same time. that joy was somehow tainted because they knew that they would come in last from

the parties which you know will be in the next and the next one the stock they said they will produce fired up against the i if they put a fight up against racism and against anti semitism they are they they want that this swing to the right certain pres this that this would be held this were the words of that of our one of the lead candidates so they want to put up was a fight against the idea of d. and against the swing to the right they said they're not the monarch minority leaders anymore but they want to be the social minority leaders so they are trying to find a way to to get left some to to get the left strong again and. i hope that speedy will not disappear into another great skirmish and will join the opposition so that they can strengthen the left and that's what i'm

talking about in terms of if they were to join forces that's there in the natural direction for them to go is they are concerned there that the left party risks after all is said and done tonight losing in terms of meaning and its ability to effect legislative change in parliament. i didn't feel these concerns scieno i i think they are they believe they can still up reach out to the voters with them with their. central of fame of social justice this is what they were painting with and when i asked them why they think that they did not get any better results with the focus on social justice they said that was because of that i have a dummy night at the whole hour campaigning with their one sceptic campaign the

refugee crisis center their reckoning that there is. a possibility to get there from their things their concerns back into focus and this is mainly social justice right and you go there the headquarters of the left party here in berlin tonight and you thank you very much you're watching live coverage of the german elections here's a reminder of what we know so far it is almost eight p.m. here in germany preliminary results show until americans conservatives with a comfortable lead but despite the celebrations the party has taken a massive cut in support merkel admitted that she had hoped for a better result her main challenger martin scholtz of the social democrats has conceded a crushing defeat results indicate the party is more sed ever show chilled says that he is. will go into opposition and the far right alternative for germany is on course to be the third biggest party in the parliament the boom to start all of

those preliminary results only again these are not yet the official results. we're going to go now to the headquarters of the green party and my colleagues will be in from the market is standing by fabio and so if we look at how things are settling now with even without the final results being there it looks like the greens are coming out in a pretty good position in terms of being part of the next government. yes that's absolutely the case i mean with at the moment more than ninety percent they feel the stronger they have won two wars compared to the last election and of course they know i have to then ask b.d.'s said they want to go to the opposition that it's also a lot of pressure on them to to make really sure that this coalition is at least seriously discussed and when we spoke here when i talk to people with the head of the greens for example another major green but insists they all say of course this

is now the moment to talk we have to talk we have to seriously discuss these issues it is of course about content but it's also about the responsibility as democrats. and fabio and the greens if it does come because religion talks the greens much like the f.t.p. are going to feel emboldened by this results right and they're going to make their demands clear with the german chancellor and we're we're seeing already in german media the leadership of the greens is saying that they're not planning to give in. yes that's true i mean the greens in their election campaign they have definitely focused on their core issue and that is the fight against climate change. and it is absolutely certain that they will focus also on this topic in the coalition talks and at the end of the day that might even be not the worst for anglo-american

because she also knows that at home she has to do more with regard to climate change there is a lot of pressure to reach the climate change or the climate protection goats within germany and if she would have the greens in a court decision she could always say well they want me to do more and so she could even do cops that might be uncomfortable for example for the industry with regard to her coalition party from the greens. or its my colleagues will be involved in mark at the headquarters of the greens here in berlin for me i thank you very much . all right let's go over now to the top table peter craven take it away peter thank you very much brant still here thorsten to judy dempsey with me we've been talking a little bit weird sort of in the huddle here across a bit so excitable about mistakes that might have been made by people like us in the media in dealing with the a.f.p. what to what mistakes might they have been what needs to be done better toast i

think i mentioned some the kind of easy all too easy labels we kind of smack on them like being a neo nazi party or a nazi party i think we need to look at the diversity that's within the f.t. and take that diversity seriously and call them out for extremist views but also report accurately and the other hand i think we don't need to kind of fall for every little bomb they stroll into the public sphere we've been doing that there's always breaking news if some a fifty person breaks some to boo and then we kind of make that make that the headline we don't necessarily have to have to do that we should kind of make it clear that these are extremist views but we shouldn't make that the news necessarily and for example take the discussion mr gold on the last year he said that. he wouldn't like to be neighbors with mr boortz hang he's a soccer player from the national team who happens to be black and then the media actually went out and asked people of the real neighbors of mr gore saying whether

mr watson was was a good neighbor that's of course falling into the trap of that was said by mr because he did frame the discussion and the discussion shouldn't be whether mr botting is a good neighbor but whether that's a crazy proposition to classify neighbor good neighbors according to the color of their skin or their religion to begin with so i think we really need to smarten up on that front so the question is are they going to continue for a horse and water because we just heard alice vital promising constructive opposition from the f.d.a. would you make of that yeah you bet they're going to throw bombs i mean. isn't going to be struck to. there's a lot and i think there are a beginning and. the problem for the f.d.a. is that now you have the c.d.c. is it already taking over points of the of the when it comes to migration when it comes to integration have a stricter and integration law now in germany. the only thing left is to further

radicalize or to do at least you know to be noticed in the media and f. therefore you have to shock sometimes but coming back to what the german media i think should have done better is have been so focused on the d d d democratic level of the party that they have forgotten what is behind this populistic revolution what's going on in the country like i said to thirty percent of the disenchanted people when we're actually talking about them and because of this because of the if he might been might be anti democratic many drawings or something doesn't quite add up we've had figures were not consistent figures for weeks and indeed i think it's fair to say now saying that eighty percent of the people in germany feel sad satisfied or very satisfied with their lot that means still twenty percent or more is a. twenty percent of the words seem to sell you remember the areas we had on on poverty for old age poverty and pensioners and nursing care the deficits that came out of

the town hall meetings with the with the kindest i think i want to add one point to that in terms of how the media should deal with the f.t. a friend of mine did an interview recently with mr galante and he nailed him on what do you do about education what's your plan on health care and he was visibly agitated because he wanted to kind of be asked how do we get all the foreigners out of our country and he wanted to respond he was he was not at all happy being questioned on this i think that's what we should do with the media and we should set the agenda much rather than letting the inverse happen remember the debate between mr mrs merkel and mr schultz all the questions that the four journalists poles were almost for following the playbook of the whole before the first half of the whole debate. the real issues that people do care about what's happening in the nursing homes what's happening and in hospitals what's happening in schools what's happening with the king infrastructure and we should not just make the density of

politics topics the topics we discuss in this country but we should kind of set the agenda and also question the fifty on the on the agenda and to pick up on two points and one is the most immediate one that there are there are so many different strands of ocean in the f.t. you can't isolate this party now and it's the same with and you have the populous parties across europe the media and i mean the media to support you really stand for how are you going to achieve this where how are you going to finance this and these are questions that are never asked it's always against and that something is against it's nice easy news in some ways this interesting but secondly and i think more importantly for the german i hate to use this cliche word narrative the language the discourse has changed over the past five or six years to boost have been. broken and now. the station's code has to deal with this it's not integration is that understanding what's not that's abuse that have been broken the nazi issue

the holocaust memorial us and to much and not to taking and to praise that the german vam act which was happening any case a decade or membership at an exhibition and i think it's just but these are issues that's out there now and it kind of be ignored ok i'm getting the word with let's go to brant he's got a recap for us. us are joining us you are watching the w's wide coverage of the german elections it is now eight p.m. here in central europe here's a reminder of what we know so far on this election night two thousand and seventeen preliminary results so i'm going to metal's conservatives with a comfortable lead but despite the celebrations they have taken a massive cut in support mental admitted that she had hoped for a better result her main challenger seen here martin schultz of the social democrats has conceded a crushing defeat results indicate the party's worst ever showing chilled says that the s.p.d.

will go into opposition and the far right alternative for germany the a.f.p. is on course to be the third biggest party in parliament that's the buddhist tog all of these numbers of these trends we want to remind you are preliminary results only they are not yet the official results. we're going to go down to the a of d. headquarters here in berlin my colleagues a lot of pots is standing by good evening to usual order we meet again i have friends. so talking to is doing a little bit about moving forward what i'm seeing in the german media right now be written about the a d is obviously a lot of shock at the numbers that they receive but also that. is being a lot written about the language that this party is using and for example the head of the party mr galland saying that he plans to hunt down the german chancellor

angela merkel are you getting a sense there of this type of rhetoric this type of political discourse being accepted as normative behavior. absolutely i think i'm excited i got on the leading candidate made that quite clear from the beginning on he said the things like we are going to hunt down i'm going to america talking about a problem entry inquiry looking into her refugee policy investigating her and her policies he's been using pretty aggressive language tonight right from the start on the other hand the other leading candidate alice vital has been trying to be present herself more as a such as a moderate voice and say it is always as always with the a of d. that gollum's has been using the more radical rhetoric of vital is downplaying it

kind of a strategy of this policy to in the end say look we are not as radical as the public might be patrolling us we are quite moderate that is what is vital told me in an interview before you know we are going to basically keep the radical extremists ponson our party unchecked once we enter the bundestag but i think from what we've heard tonight to the rhetoric coming from the states here that has been quite an aggressive and i think that the problem and we'll be seeing a very polarized and very heated debates once it's once it starts and b.s.d. is taking its place or. our colleague the posts there at the headquarters of the a.s.d. here in berlin thank you very much we're going to go now to the headquarters of the christian democrats the c.d.u. here in berlin my colleague michele a customer is there good evening to you again michelle we've been talking this

evening about the possibility of angle americal not having much leverage going into coalition talks and being somewhat of a lame duck leader the next four years are you getting a sense of that they are at party headquarters. why there clearly is a sense that tough times lie ahead for us all there's no glossing over that what looks to be the result if that becomes true this would be the second worst result in the history of modern germany for the c.d.u. certainly that puts a dent in the record more than a dent in the record of the german chancellor angela merkel whose political brand so carried this party particularly in those last elections where you know me is enough was enough to have a the success of forty percent plus that's something the c.d.u. could only dream of tonight and then there's the not very appetising looking option of having to make a coalition with those smaller parties on the op side with the social democrats

most likely ending up in the opposition or they vow to become the opposition they could certainly have her back when the a.f.p. puts into practice what it has already threatened which is basically to hunt the german chancellor and what clearly translate as to give her as hard a time as possible in those years to come the big question now is whether the german chancellor will be able to form a coalition here where the prices are rising to get those smaller parties she needs on board as we speak there is there may even be some inflation in the cost right now of putting a coalition together in german politics after this election michelle the governor at the headquarters of the christian democrats thank you very much. well we don't even have the final numbers yet but we are getting some significant reaction to what the numbers suggest my colleague a funny charge oint us now from alexanderplatz here in berlin where we understand

funny a protest a demonstration is being put together against the a.f.d. . exactly brad in fact the crowd behind me is getting a bigger and louder people are using their whistles and they are basically angry and shocked at the same time when they look at the numbers the day a.f.p. placed third in this democratic elections but they say this party is everything but democratic if everything but democracy and they don't deserve to be in the german parliament not this is the biggest crowd here right now but i can right now from the it would a stocking our small crowd gathered as about expressing doubt the sad expressing their anger that the far right party for the first time since second world war could enter the parliament there is also a lot of police presence around here in east expected to be that these are not just going to be under full of tension here in berlin at alexandre plots which by the

way is one of the main squares in berlin by a lot of people gather beat for political reasons before human rights but it's definitely the center for debate normally what is quite bizarre let me tell you is that why these people are protesting just above them in disguise creep up behind on his high rise building there is the odd city for germany party celebrating of course that they won that they won by of sooty and a point percentage points the third place in the german parliament aid surreal image there that you just painted for worse funny and we saw images of the growing police presence there at alexanderplatz and do you get the sense that there is concern about this for just becoming violent in any way. well the danger here is of course that there are also a lot of people from the far left who are mixing up the normal civilians the people

who are just simply shocked who came out from their living rooms right now leaving the t.v. sets coming here to simply express their dissent but then of course the question is whether this is going to turn violent and that really depends on the mixture year of these groups i have seen a lot of a father left people who are associated with the far left as well and you see more and more police in fact you can hear right now there is the sirens from ambulances from police who are coming here to make sure that this area stays secure and that's violence does not erupt. all right funny french are there at alexanderplatz in berlin where we can hear the sounds of police also where it looks like approach us demonstration is gathering against the alternative for germany political party funny thank you very much we'll get back to her in a short while stay safe as well clinton all right we're going to go now to tell us a sparrow he is at the headquarters of the social democrats. this evening where

he's been the entire evening and this is without a doubt a dismal evening dismal results for the social democrats. are you there tell us. i am indeed here grantor you've got i've got an important guest here mr ralph staking out a key social democrat and i want to ask him the question that he just asking me and that is why the s.p.d. had such a dismal result today when it's very difficult just a few hours after the polls have closed to really show what what's gone wrong yet it was a clear. vote of the voters to tell us the grand coalition should not be prolonged and that the corporation as a conservative c.d.u. has to end today and it will and we have to accept the role as a position leader there's another reason for that for the first time since world war two we have right wing extremists in the german born this time and they can

never have the role of opposition leader they would have though and now it's our role first of all to be opposition against the coalition from conservatives greens and liberals probably but also fighting back the right wing extremists that we have by addressing the social problems that people have because in the end i think the extremists won because there was not enough difference to be seen between conservatives and social democrats martin shows himself said that he wanted to lead that new face of the social democrats but what legitimacy does he have after he just scored the worst result for the s.p.d. in total he started the renewal process just some months ago and i think he did a really remarkable job in the campaign and it wasn't his fault at all and you know what our party members tell us are two things first of all stop the great grand coalition go into the opposition and second. leave our party chairman at the place where he is leading the party in this renewal process that's necessary and i will

support him with all possible as i have what will be the key goals of the s.p.d. as the main opposition party in germany or there are two things first of all we have to follow on. our social more just. social europe social unity in germany and addressing the. every day problems people have with their pension with health with labor with education fees and that kind of thing and second it's our job to achieve that the writing populists that have entered the parliament will disappear as soon as possible but you say focusing on social justice will be one key element but he was clearly something that didn't resonate with voters in germany in the last few months but it didn't resonate because we're part of a cabinet where i'm going to america and the conservatives and read didn't really well and able to show that there are clear differences between the two of us i mean . america or decided not to seek the competition as far as programs are concerned

and there was a kind of a process that's brought the that was worth a lot of boredom from her side and this president she didn't achieve a good result i mean from another percenters yet they lost more than we did and therefore i think there must be competition between the middle right party c.d.u. and the middle left party s.p.d. and if we achieve that then the right in congress won't have the success they had this time and we've been opposition in the past and will be in the future and hopefully not too long thank you very much mr segment for this interview back to you brant in the studio can you hear me can you ask miss just ignore a question for us do we still have thomas there yes sure look at what we just want to ask him we've been discussing all evening does he feel like the s.p.d. is being punished for america all's policy with migrants back in two thousand and fifteen are they being for taking to task to me in the in the studio

if you think the s.p.d. has been punished for our policies on refugees in the last few years. at least voters obviously thought if one is an opposition should be the protest parties and so they had benefits from that yet on the other hand you would never see an s.p.d. taking a position against humanity will do that thank you very much mistaken. all right to you brant all right thomas perry there at the headquarters for the social democrats here in berlin thank you very much i mean it was interesting right because we've been we've been discussing the evening of media exactly why these social democrats did not succeed in getting it through to at least to their voters that they have been doing things the past four years and that they do have accomplishments that they can fall back on they just didn't come through apparently the voters did not. owning those issues that we talked about so minimum wage they got

a raise in wages and in fact wages are going up in germany for the first time in quite a while they pushed through better pensions for women who had had to children and that made a difference particularly to lower income women gave marriage the chance for kind of took the issue over but it originally started as an s.p.d. issue so on many different levels there were issues that had everything to do with social justice she's voted against yes in the end she had her cake and she gave it to me essentially was perceived as having let this go through to a vote but then she voted against it just to make sure to to appease her concert let me just tell you just tell our viewers what we're looking at right now you can see the winder there in the corner of your screen that is where we're going to take you in about a minute from now for the in germany it's called the elephant one does the elephant roundtable this is where the heads of all the parties will sit down for the first time with these results coming in and basically they're going to be this will be

the first phase of and rest and this can be a big political theater you have seen some amazing political theater at this elephant meeting of the elephants the elephant asked no one will ever forget when get out should i thought he had won the election and basically put america in her place and then later found out he had lost it he was floating sky high about that meeting of the elephant so we'll see what happens this time around all right that's right that was back in two thousand and nine now and see what happens election night two thousand and seventeen let's go now into the room with the political. good. evening and you know it. was very then and round of the lead candidates our party chairs will be of the parties they will be represented in parliament germany has voted could impact this election hasn't who's going to be governing with whom who's going to be in the opposition enough that's ok to find

myself i want to talk about the chancellor and the head sheryl as you do you about insurance and social democrats large insurance had we have to because that is yes you your kind. of the green. category and more going on i cut and my turn from the f.t. and head of a left party cardiac keeping a warm welcome to all of you. and i do miss chancellor we have madam chancellor i want to talk to a couple with you you didn't expect to be down minus eight percent second worst results since nineteen forty nine for those christian democrats and you also have a worst result as a year how disappointed are you had the music. when actually i would have liked to have seen a better result but i'm not disappointed i'm grateful to all of the voters who cast their vote in our favor and we were. clearly the strongest party this city and c.s.u. together and that was one of our most important targets another was that no government

could be formed without us which is why there's a great deal of work to be done not least in terms of the f.d.a. making its way and to long term and understand but i'm grateful it's twelve years now that i've had to the government. and i think we can be proud of this result mr short's you were hoping to become german chancellor and it was clear at six pm that this wasn't going to happen the worst result of the. dissent from. to me nine we've heard your declaration that you want to go into the opposition why are you not. going to make yourself i could but obviously it's a bit. result for us as well but of up just as ms merkel did i would like to thank the voters for what they the trust that they've given us with obviously we would hope to get more of the but there's a mandate that we've been given by the budget office aim to ensure that democracy

becomes stabilized. and this is why the job that i have a search area for the s.d.p. is to ensure that we are strong baskin against the enemies of democracy that are now sitting in the blender start over the age of market and i believe that ms makeover and their election that was scandalous and so you know what if they screw up the constant need of refusing to enter into a confrontation with the democratic left is partially in the right parties why don't you think and this refusal to make a clear statement about have policies created a vacuum which was always filled by the f.t. of people you know that you have to rather for and i believe that. they will pay the price is the question democrats have paid a price they're going to have to go away and think about what kind of the future is really possible in this constellation of what i think we are in opposition to this one policy and we hope to have

a constructive. comments we want to give everybody an opportunity to speak first mr might and the f.t. is represented in the parliament for the very first time you're tired of the third strongest party or first times in the party for the first time there's a party just right most of the cd you and c s u what do you want to do i mean are you going to have riots and populism as busy as you've had so far or constructive opposition. i think your question is it's a new way to do that and we've just incited riots and populism over that's something i would contradict immediately we have offered. constructive cooperation and many states need riots is not the way to go at all we want to be a strong opposition but i think this country needs it because they haven't had it so far we want to draw attention to the infringements of the law that we've seen around migration policy european policy and it's quite clear that we are not going

to just sit back and let this happen your political mr lynn you cannot have you don't have to your political aim was to get back into the target level of the bundestag tiger in the first league as it were with all of them are you happy with your result of the comfortable that we had hoped to be the third strongest party that was in and we didn't manage to achieve that with a cough that we would have liked to have. been or the third strongest parties a liberal party european party we thought that would send a clear signal to the world that with the a.f. . they won that's interested in sorts of you know. some of your own for the voters and a lot of thinking about them on racial purity and god knows what if you're in one of the book what can we do if you don't this is how it is we don't want to continue with the election campaign mr schultz what we need to do is stabilize germany in turbulent times in europe and of the world to people and i think each one of us

needs to look long and hard at what they can do to contribute to this and think about what role they can play come on even in the opposition you can contribute to stabilizing the country but we certainly will not allow the s.l.u.t. to decide on its own who gets forced into a government or not this is something that has to be based on policy i think that's what we'll talk about responsibility for a coalition in a moment a good first of all let's conclude this round mr kidding. again no government opposition for you starts and yet you are now the smallest parliamentary. having been the head of the opposition as it were before and was it a mistake that you and miss margaret connection over the course of the election campaign attacked martin short as if he was the main opponent i see a different way i believe that my party in absolute figures has actually increased so i'd say we were among the winners of this election even with the under thirty's

we're doing even better than elsewhere where which makes me optimistic for the future and of course i think it's tradition to thank the voters and i want to take the opportunity to search well obviously we have mixed feelings i'll admit that clearly because on the whole i think the outcome of this election shows a shift to the right and you know the progressive central like left for example is now below forty percent the first time since one thousand nine hundred is a major challenge for all of us and from tomorrow the aim is to fight for other majorities not progressive ones going after twelve years in the opposition. in a slight increase you want to be. governing coalition. do you think that the grassroots would approve you in a coalition would have to be the city you know well i said we find ourselves in

a difficult and complicated situation here and this election evening we have a critical examination of what we're going to be doing in parliament and with the parties that will be present there not least the far right and. we have a mandate from our voters they have elected as described by as a party a common europe as an environmentally aware party that wants to push climate protection forward we've got the paris agreement on climate protection and we're going to work employ to. that and justice is a major issue and let's not do the greens is in favor of this we want to do justice to this mandate and then we will look closely at the analyses at the various talks that we may have to see whether we can work together or not so yes mr herman from there as you know if in fact that is going to services have lost ground so much

that has to do as well with the loss in the c.s.u. of below forty percent as you were around forty nine percent last time so you've got the very end state assembly elections next year is your party chair responsible for these losses under pressure well i think we're all responsible and c.s.u. that's clear we. carry out lection campaign together we mobilized on the grassroots level in the forecast looked just a few days ago was very different so we need to analyze this promptly of course but the start of the year we had a situation and germany where we were talking about the perspectives for social democrats left party and green party and we said we have to do everything we can to ensure that we don't have that in power and we certainly succeeded in keeping that combination out of government and as the chancellor said the result of this election shows that without the c.s.u. and the c.d.u. germany cannot be governed so there's a clear mandate from the voters here the fact that we're disappointed in bavaria by

the result is clear we need to analyze this carefully because we want to ensure that in one year when we have states somebody elections the situation is quite different in bavaria and in the forecast that we saw in the analysis that we've had so far we've seen that many of the a.f. data from the voters didn't vote because they believe in the f.t. but because they were disappointed in our party so that's something we need to think about we need to work on these issues and we need to get in the electorate back on board. with the obvious obviously that they didn't all just vote for us. yes now from your party headquarters we've heard that the right flank has to be closed what does that mean. does does that mean that the f.d.a. is taking on some of your positions or what are you talking about we have nothing to do with f.d.a. positions. we've never shared positions some of them we have

a very clear election program that is a v c s u n c d u we've got over there in components about a very in plan the specific the various positions that we've had in it and that's what it's about with thirty eight percent we're obviously not happy but thirty eight percent compared to the party results in many other. areas is a respectable. number and those who voted for as we owe our responsibility to for our party programs and we all work for them but only in bavaria. yes but in a bear area that's where our voters are they're the ones who voted for us in the area and they trust us as i'm sure all the other parties think is well we're going to deliver on our promises that's what they expect from us whether if i look at mr didn't know others obviously that's what he wanted to have that's another ensure that the others would get a chance to speak well sure but let me just say that we're going to consistently

pursue our aim and horse ever said the same of mr schultz let me return to what mr bindon i said as well an appeal to those in responsibility here the s.p.d. responded they responded quickly to you and now it's that you are coming out of the coalition does this mean you are definitely not available for coalition discussions in the coming weeks or months even though some people from the christian democratic union have almost baked you to do so. and i use certainly want to leave this government. open almost as i listen to what. mr goodnow said quite closely with you i think out of the if there's one party that has taken its responsibilities this country seriously over the years then it is social democracy thank you for reminding me of that certainly we are all party that has a responsibility to this country a strong opposition in the phase that we are in at the moment is crucial. or do we

just want to leave opposition matters to the others but we will i do not believe that we are going to see the christian democrats working with the f.t.p. and the greens and if so we will be in opposition to them i mean. miss macro is going to rubber stamp anything you like don't worry and i'll put up with everything i know how these coalition negotiations will happen you know michael will make any concession to you to stay in power and that's not hard for her you know somebody called her hoover of ideas she just sucks out of other people's ideas i think that's a very good idea. and i believe that our job in germany is to ensure that there's that confrontation that this country needs desperately. those on the right and on the left of democracy in this country need to give citizens of this country a plan for the future as michael hasn't done it we have a plan we didn't manage to achieve a majority support it so we're going to look at what others see as the future of

this country because i think they'll be a contradiction a coalition here between the green party and the c.s.u. . i think that will be paralyzed germinates. let me just answer this question how are you going to pull out of this government that you have criticized so strongly does that mean you're ministers are all going to be pulled out perhaps you could allow me to conclude my thoughts i think it's one thing if in public you broadcasters are constantly being told what you're supposed to think you will allow me i hope to conclude. well i got thoughts here let me just finish what i was trying to say if you wouldn't go now there's going to be a government of contradictions and we will be an opposition have i said that the myth of cooperation between the c.d.u. and see as you and the s.p.d. has finished. and i became the chair of the s.p.d. i said that we would stick to our promises literally end of this coalition but this

coalition has been voted out of power people don't to be wanted in the world that we have been give it is the role of the opposition and any terms of a plan for social justice for this country are responsibility for your opinion and for defending democratic principles in this country that is what we will be pursuing in the opposition in this country chancellor if you need do you believe that the as that was yesterday definitely saying no means no which means you have only the opportunity of working together with the f.t.p. in the green party. or do you think there might be a minority government with changing majority as well first of all perhaps i could say that i am rather sad when i think that the good work that we did in the coalition has been characterized in this manner i believe we achieved a great deal for our country in the difficult situations and it works well together i think i safely state that now in terms of the numbers there are two

options for forming new. video in your. coalition in terms of the numbers you finish your sentence let me finish line perhaps so in terms of the numbers it would be enough there are a number of options and so the question that mr van put the responsibility that each of us has at this table is not as a theoretical issue it's a very practical one. and the thing is germany needs a government and i'm pleased that there are at least two. options well and you're a little deprived. don there is there is well. we went into the election saying that this c.s.u. will push for the chance to remaining i'm going to america obviously you really are we have clear positions everybody knew i was in for a hand. and i think it's

a matter of course and it's part of the job that we have a. union to approach the individual parties and i have taken on board now that the s.p.d. it would seem is not available to enter into exploratory talks with us but you may feel differently tomorrow but certainly we have a government that is still in position until we have elected a new president of the. just talk and based on the lower saxony elections i don't think we're going to instantly have a new government and these are turbulent times that we live in amman and this is why i would like to know heel to everyone should be aware of their responsibility and to continue that i'd have no doubt that they will i don't think you'd really answered my question here so i think what you're saying here is really really a bit much it's just a bit much i mean you're appealing to us for responsibility let me just state in no uncertain terms that on my first day as the chair of the s.p.d.

i called you and i said miss michael until the very end of this government. to the very end you can rely on us not a single day longer because this government has been elected out of power and you have lost more than any one of. its own out of mr short so we would like well even more time to talk about perhaps i can just say one thing we are talking so nicely about the energy the green party and i think on stage in your working together perhaps we would be allowed to say something about this and that mr schultz has just said that a coalition based on the c.s.u. and the green party would be a party that was paralyzed the country. seeing them so that means that you are saying or quite clearly this is going to be a bad government of such you're saying well no let's ascertain this you're saying that we're going to be granting parties together and it was a coalition that will paralyze the country so you were accepting

a bad government i mean how much make that would have been ashamed of this you're the one who said it was a radical solution. perhaps we could proceed with business if. now so madam chancellor you know we have just heard when we're speaking with this is if there is a time we've got of the f d a party or the right of the c.d.u. in the c.s. you will feel many are shocked by this and how much responsibility of things do you have with your breath e.g. policy for this and what are the consequences for the c.d.u. will you be following horse a horse you said that this is the union has to go right that they left on the council to much space to the right wing well i said they should close the right flank i didn't say we should become more right wing or thank you for clarifying that out there and thank you for the question of i am the chancellor of germany. and i am therefore always our sponsible and i'm not trying to escape this

responsibility to any degree and the recent weeks we have re capitulated what took place in autumn twenty fifth. and i was sticking to my position here that all of the other options that were disgusted you know having water cannons on the german border were just not an option and i believe the decision i made was right it is however also right that when you haven't fully. manage to get rid of all of the concerns that people have their issues around integration illicit migration when you place the things we need to so it's not external border protection that isn't where it needs to be and we cannot say that we've managed to combat all of the courses that lead to people fleeing their homes and i was i have said. that there's still much that needs to be done however all of the decisions both decisions made in september twenty fifteen that went through the

european court of justice. and was conform with all of the law and the. constitutional court has also looked at all of these decisions so this accusation that we have you know not to. not act to them conform with the law is simply wrong but if you want to talk about the concerns that people have we need to talk about the fact that there isn't affordable housing that there is. poverty in old age is an issue and that there's a scarcity of. skilled staff i think these are issues that when it all started baited i don't think it was only my party that even raised these issues in the talk shows etc i think that what this country does in opposition that works to ensure there be more social justice in a modern mental justice. justice to respond back as well as a. question of. the success of

the green party particularly eastern germany. they are going to be rather. what is the explanation both for is when you're not able to convince everyone or where do you see the problem of the far right if there is a success and it's an issue that all of us here have to think about how are you going to deal with the new. part two are you going to accept them or are you going to ignore them and the bonus track. well it is indeed the case. and germany. has very high. and results but i think that it's important that in the bundestag we engage on the motions put forward by the f.t. and is very clear in our sponsor that but what i'm not prepared to do and this is something that recent weeks have shown us that what's on the fringe in our

democracy we're in a situation that is not good i am not for the hared to allow the f.d.a. to define a lot of debates. so yes we should talk about the concerns of the problems of the people in this country and we should take responsibility for it said mr schwartz i have to say that what you're doing now is not what we did during the election campaign it's a tough. tough stance here you mean we're not to election campaign for four years time now what we have to do now is look at how we can agree and how we can have critically examine the issues together. i mean we don't want to be an open fire forum in our gardens that splits the country and so a party like yours which was on the right side of the nazi regime for example in the national socialist time that i must work together with the democratic forces to show your voice you know now it's you are sitting here. at the table with us mr my

turn from the end you know you've said you want to do you have a constructive if a tough you are physicians entirety but well and many are wondering how you want to prevent the trends that we've been seeing in the public sphere in recent weeks and months you know this sort of nationalist right wing extremist business that galland you of all your colleagues who said we want our country back doesn't that sound like right wing extremism what does that mean starts with i mean so you. in the german bundestag we want to have a policy for the german people that is the mandate and to ensure for the good the german people and for the entire world. people this of ethnic minorities many are very much integrated into our country they obey the law they work here you have it in for them and their families and their part and parcel of our people so if we keep hearing this nonsense nobody can seem to get out

of election campaigning here we're all right he's three mr worst crisis that's what i mean we're supposedly racist or whatever the park is and i mean well surely you are but i don't know where you read that but. i mean many people say the welcome culture is the best protection against terrorism that they have a look at who actually voted for the f.d.a. though where do we have the strongest figures you will find it difficult to look it is among these people from ethnic minorities you are well integrated here and they can't believe what's happening here in america you know that we're now out of our let me just finish this if mrs macro sense here that everything she did was in accordance with the law and then i think she should allow and encourage a committee to look at whether or not it really was. in line with the law i mean there are plenty of people most going to probably for example others who worked in the supreme constitutional court who say that when this government has

infringed on a lot and now we want to have you know there's going to be reports coming out of lloyd for the most even going to start suggesting that some of the things that have been done are not in line with the rule of law. and i wonder if you could just respond to my question if there are any formal tendencies in your party that have talked about you know right way to stream misc racists. days months well you must love them a bit. we will not allow racist positions always in a phobia but we simply don't have any in our hearts. ok come on mr my turn not as i have here listening to your lead candidate you have a lead candidate who said we have to be proud of the soldiers achievements in two world wars he's talking about the vam. mr mehta are said the same thing that your are seriously going to maintain that

a war of annihilation launched by germany is something we can be proud of i am seriously not saying that you don't have anyone in your ranks. i mean to come on. yet it is. said in saxony is afraid of mixed race peoples. you know there are examples of avoid terms like leaves. i tell you what you finish what you are saying and then i'll say something i will because you've said something to me. but. as i look at what's happening in our country we're seeing successively dissolution of our country because we have an illegal migration it's clear that our country cannot stand that you may have a different view of it but then let us admit disputed democratically that he would

do exactly that in the bundestag obviously people absolutely have a right to have their own opinion but i said it at the party congress as well i see it in the inner cities that i'm walking and i only see the odd german about it cannot be the aim of. all right now i really want to give madam chancellor of the floor to respond to that and to respond to the call for an increased committee to scrutinize it well. i see plenty of. people on the streets but i can't distinguish which of them are jobs have a german citizenship or which don't whether they have an ethnic background or not. now mind you i. think. that you have said some of these people should be sent to anatolia that it's come from your gronk so i think we have

a problem here. yeah i think we have tried she's going to make it clear we understand our constitution and love it and we want to have to hold discussion but i also think that it's going to be tough. in the. going to social subset of the if i can also ask your question oh i haven't answered the question about the inquiry commission i know you know what i'm not afraid of such a commission so i just asked to make sure that we still have enough time left to talk about the future. for the other topics that have to mention for example by ms kipping i agree that they are important i understand that there are people in the east where people feel disconnected for example in mexico both best pomerania and we have to debate the economic future of our country seeing the most dramatic changes that affect all human kind of digitization for example and we have to discuss what is supposed to happen in the future how to make progress and so i

don't think we should get bogged down in a debate is related to the past social as you said in one of the programs special elections. that if you have to remember is a way to make right wing extremist comments in the in this talk he would throw them out of the one the starter what does that mean. i know them very well i've been the president of the european parliament and i've seen such members of parliament before. and only send people like me samoyed. well you buy that and then behind him what you would find the people like. and they found stories so i know you know i'm friends with just a machinist and all of our parliament good to you and others. and i could spend the evening telling you you know what the strategy is you know they're always trying to push the limits of and trying to get across a red line and to give you pause and as though it wouldn't work as well and i can only because i commend to the speaker of the next one is starting to be very

consistent and his or her approach to such a taboo is easy for. me. and replace mr lynn is no i was talking about certain contradictions in your party program before but now imagine if you missed a moment you would be leading the opposition as it were in such a situation was really. d.s.p. day and thank you for mentioning that we were on the right side of you know not doing the national socialist period plume this was our task will be to deal with this right wing extremism. and as soon as we look at the world as there is such a new documentary group we have to make sure that we have a strong of ocracy because we have a strong opposition which didn't start. with some tough words on the migration crisis and with a rather euro skeptic because you have tried to get so much here and there are the voters hasn't worked out why not know this is an entirely wrong or the impression

right we are a liberal cosmopolitan party even forgotten and few however we have seen that in our last four years some things have gone wrong with this in the end german born this talk of the city to the s.p.l. and the greens and to meet agreed on many topics on the political and there were very reasonable arguments to put forward. and i was like a political move. you jani but still we haven't really seen any policies supporting the put so-called middle class of people wanting to become part of the middle class time when this talk of i got lost so the middle the middle. and the center of society was not addressed by the bonus tax policy and as this is what we would like to work on we want a united europe which i can find europe marked by the rule of law were all the individual member states assume their responsibility in a common audition for we want a migration policy modeled on the canadian model which means that we can have i

qualify it unique work is immigrate here and the people here. are some of the f.t.p. in one thousand nine hundred seventy nine by the i've submitted the first draft for a new migration legislation and the a of do you. didn't even exist like that with their lives but the question is how do we deal with the air deal now through you and my recommendation would be don't listen to all of the provocative statements just tried to taken over them sometimes because this is their business model just to provoke people going off in iraq if you can it's more important to look at the facts and what it really matters and i've seen the air d. in an autonomous failure live action campaign and i know they're not interested in arguments or ground is when the others are talking facts i know they are at the buffet and i look up filling their stomachs i don't have any plan really look up nothing for pensions and nothing else so we. shouldn't report being put off too

much by their provocation but we have to force them to join i debate on the political facts of course yes but you know this is what we want to do. and so it's one of the truths of this even as we are asked mr smith keeping about this is that the f.t. has become very strong and the easiest of all actually second to leave and you are from answering disease and you've seen how the evidence a.f.d. act in the us as you state legislature. and apparently they're still going strong what is your analysis of this why are there still so strong. that if you look at mr hooker he became more and more radicalized. and you said things like the holocaust memorial sloan morial shame on that quote from mr hooker and there are more examples standing perhaps mr moore you might say of just a misunderstanding when you didn't mean it. i mean but this is a debate that also happens and it's a ring in parliament and it's important i think that it does allow the mistake we

made if i may say that i was not only and i mistake of see how to use it is that that hasn't really been the right public debate on this even the public hasn't really needs to listen to arguments and as i said in the i disagree with mr bennett i think ignoring is not an option it's all about going back to a factual debate southerners girls on and notorious i perhaps i didn't understand that well yeah but ignoring them is not the right sort of a good. sign that you i mean my task here is not to analyze somebody else's election results but i think if you have is that whenever you have somebody who tries to copy such a party and i say this to mr hamel not because i think you're trying to copy the i have deep trouble you're the one saying you have to close a right it's like yes i know closing all this that he's going to be closing yes but mr howe on it and you look at the thing is just getting more people on it might then say no then i prefer the original line this is what i would like to see is

that the democrats in this country that is the majority of muslims stands this and if there is a party saying we want our country back then let me say loud and clear many voters here did not wish to want to vote for the air and so they shouldn't be setting the topics in the debate about tonight so much and you can't replay value so i actually think it's very much it's very. good now let it go no no no i don't. oh look i somehow it's not because i think somebody wants to ask you a question. but you please listen and calm down a little bit. of otherwise nobody can understand anything i'm going to skipping keeping this question about the situation is that he says you are from dressing yourself. your party doesn't come second anymore when search if you lost your place to the a of d. doesn't that make you yours comes out sad and i lose a forum is the essence of whatever you say this is about the reasons why this happened things i think people are outraged by the loss so should have economically

and this is very good creating ground for populist propaganda but i'm going to it's not an excuse but if you want to analyze who crosses we have to and that social uncertainty about that and secondly you know the houses that you were interested in and your tie see that the very one we can balance raises you are lazy bush bible when you mind if i don't know how to use try to you donald and look at problems from the same angle i hope this doesn't hurt anybody so you know there were differences between what happened in life and interest in you and if you can the speaking on the rallies or leipzig always the ones that were met with counter brandeis want us to and that's never happened in just the book of monday and there's no more saying that this is addressed to the media. and if social issues are just so is indian biden on the side then that is a problem look at the tribute today to the fog of the sixty minutes are spending discussing what refugees and migration are going on and the questions were chosen by the moderators of that so that's

a problem and what i learned from that this was the mr following in the club i think that i will have to develop our own argument as to what is going to decline lloyd and if you really want to know what happened to the money tweet out of the ordinary and the small people you have to look to other the top with money for what the others do is doing is just they are distracting people going to the top of what they are these people who don't have a job because they don't have a house in order to invent and they will be told it's all the refugees volitional on one. the bands first and then what kind of a station you can talk even about for those of kansas that you started because nick everybody is just trying to anyway can you tell me the same before and i was surprised you know that already kind of to find affordable housing and so on this the states once focused on this mean if you don't want a national there were braces no can you grow and we will always ask you some kind of art and questions about exactly why the s.s. they want to talk i think they want to know if i saved fifty per billion euros i

don't know that i just want credit and you know it will affect the action as will and i like the fact that people who are poor anyway and we'll make it clear that he has no solution for those who are you know it was all my life for me it's good to be mr might be a good guy now you've just heard what you would have to expect but it's mostly i think about often you know in terms of treatment in the future. let me ask you a woman dollars and your trade group stick to the common parliamentary rules yes of course out of them just like they do it in the state legislature it's no problem question then who can know about listen there can't be a parliament without prosecutions in opposition i don't know shit about the poor would say yes to the others in the parliament usenet debates before i remember the very lively debates of for decades i know. you know the times throughout but there was still a discussion of a culture of discussion to be made in new york but just how it will live if you will i mean if you think of the last legislative term you don't remember much

because nobody is really discussing anymore it's also a board what does it make you get that starts with us and let me say one less thing about what mr kenyon's just mentioned about a house that you're human for keeping which can you go on i understand that it's of interest that mississippi honey doesn't want you to how do you know you migrants and it is culturally good when he will come on it's not. just good if you keep it would be a problem at the moment is that we don't have enough houses and we have so many refugees coming here. and having said that somewhere. and then don't necessarily need to like competitions because you think you know i need competency to it's only good to think it's a competition about this institution i checked back it's ones look if you know that you can't i don't follow. you can respond but i really saw and briefly i was born and i want more an awful lot about how saying i'm going to carry on rents and he's told me no you and i want to go two hundred fifty thousand is you know you don't get psyched to spend in my house and you know it's every year. and in the past whenever there was a social problem and needs problem e-mail you always blamed it on the refugees and

that's not a solution i was you know i wouldn't want to meet this could get limits on them i've done you know what you seem to be forgetting me let me say that it's like the most about this is a discussion which is very similar to what we've had been previously roxas knowing this is even a nice underdone we've elected which when you can just talk about half of their time is spent you know if they say and how it's a time but not as we speak you know it's about the. kind of you know it's not something i would love to be could be inside and i was mostly white we really have to discuss you know just to extend our reach of public service broadcasters have made a contribution. not to make the entry smaller but making the bigger you feel about these discussions everyday not of any you know couldn't so we i want to talk about this kind of research problem was and how we are going to deal with my future and of course that means even with the f.d.a. but it's not the only problem is i mostly just as i saw you know this country you

mentioned on the income of this would be very we have to make sure. that our voters and for computed for them out of disappointment as we've seen in the another so you're sort of about how the baby have a whole back to the democratic type ok blaming it on the public service for all of us is if you system i think that's where we can arguments and by the way i'm talking about all how you need to comment on the time but also in the atlantic a we can change the topic now if you want. i was under this. like you would say you know people could have discussed something else but that's not fair you chose that job. now let us talk about the different possibilities are forming a government and we understand that he doesn't want a grand coalition. government of the you can feed you the greens and the f.t.p. difficult what about a minority government the largest parliamentary group but that be conceivable or not at all because. i believe that

a stable german government is a value in itself i believe our entire parliamentary system and it is different from countries that have a lower inclusion of minority governments and i'm not sure before i even had assumed exploratory talk you know we've just left our party headquarters all of a sudden rushed over here we're going to be going back to our party i've stopped quarters was asleep on it for a night and then i hope you at least give us the chance to have a few exploratory talks at least as our plan and this is here for myself of the range that's the plan then surely we don't need to talk this evening. at all of the various options that are out there the main thing is that we create a stable government here in germany that has been a trademark of perhaps i'm repeating myself a bit but i believe that this country. has. done.

a great deal of good things but we have an awful lot of challenges facing us in the future if you look at the situation of the steel workers the situation of tucson and then what we have to do in the automotive industry were one eight. hundred seventy thousand jobs. a menu look at the education system in this country i think we've got really a great deal that we need to do and our citizens have given us a mandate to deal with these issues and i think this you do you would have liked to have had a better result in the selection but all the same we have a very clear mandate to tackle these issues to deal with the future. now mr lynn. you may play a role in tackling this mandate you said if you want to if you do enter into a coalition with this cd you you want to be on an equal footing with you be demanding the finance ministry we didn't make any. conditions of this kind we.

certainly want to make. a contribution here and we have committed to this you know you talked about the issue of europe not any more. automatic come out. in the fog transfers pursuing from the canadian model of integration. digitising. we don't want to lose any further time on education at the top of our priority list that's what we want to be measured by. so it would be irresponsible not to try to shape the government and the country. but at the same time it's also important to ensure that the c.d.u. and the s.p.d. and the green party in the last term of office could not be distinguished in terms of their policies and i believe the vote for the f.t.p. was also a vote for political change and if this political change doesn't come about in

a new government then i. will not leave this position to the a.f.p. on the far right not a policy of pushing for the vessel. order and actually all they're interested in is racism and xenophobia and not working with other countries we need to strengthen the european union not weaken it so a party like that one should not be the opposition. is going we have a sense that there's an increasingly deeper gap between you and the f.d.p. . even greater than. the difference between you and the c.e.o. do you can you imagine overcoming these differences would you be interested in that coalition of this kind well being interested isn't the issue and certainly not this evening on the issue is taking these things seriously and being responsible and these are the issues that important of course many things separate environmental

issues separates us not know it doesn't doesn't it oh there must have been a wonderful then we haven't got a problem how wonderful so putting the paris agreement into practice here in germany is something that you want yes it is why not say it now you know this kind of didn't. i really noticed during the election campaign that you know i was a good sport but it's over now naturally we committed to the paris agreement the difference is that the ideological and subsidy driven energy transformation is what we're after we're interested in a market economy approach mr lynn i think we could continue discussing who's ideological i mean if you look at north ryan westphalia for ideological reasons you drove a continuation of lignite coal extraction. but be that as it may the question of whether or not we can have serious discussions about these

issues. and that we don't look at the past but look at what needs to happen in the future if that is the way future i mean you said does a great deal separate us from the f.t. magically we. very consistent in the climate issue and our electorate expect us to do exactly that and the social issues will be right at the heart of it mr schultz said this evening that. believes he has to go into the opposition i'll take that on board i don't know whether he will stay stick with that or not but i take it on board but that means that we need to focus on social issues at the heart of the government because this is what you can say it's time for justice and then say right we'll do it in for a year's time that's the job now. and obviously we have to discuss all of these issues but i don't know if that's the way forward i can't say i mean we can do all manner of different things but certainly not this evening carry out coalition negotiations that will not be possible i'm certain that we will have to speak these

issues it will be complicated be difficult as well i don't know mr schultz listening. in the current mood that you're in this. denunciation encounter denunciation isn't the way forward looking and i know your programs and i know mr programs i know ms magical is a program and i know that very a plan bringing these things together is going to be very very difficult but i think you'll succeed which is good form that government go ahead i believe this country needs a confrontation with you as a centrist right centrist party and the opposition so that we don't rely on hard just like that one and when it's about shaking to mocker saying now before we start talking at once. let me just intervene here surely nobody here. we need to have a new election or. we have a sense that you were expecting to be the new german minister of the interior i

mean you only contribute six percent to the. union. in terms of voters. i have always said that all. all of these rumors about me wanting this position as minister and i'm not going to get involved with and that continues this evening. we will ascertain everybody's positions when we start negotiations and discussions and that's the most important thing is the c.s.u. and at the end of the day at some point we love form the government but it's not about me. and i think if we are to be serious you know everyone in their election campaign pushed for their. program and of course there's that very a plan and then we've made agreement here and the others have their own and i wouldn't want people to think that the first thing we're going to do is. sit down and

get arguing about all of these things i mean the issue at hand here is germany and germany future and many people have asked me that if we there's the dictator you know i korea what's happening there how are the us and for responding to that germany do what and europe doesn't want to do what's our relationship with russia china these are the important issues as well and then the question of domestic security and. economic prosperity in the future etc we mustn't think that it's just about if you know the sort of haggling at a market or something like that. it's about an atmosphere but it's not about atmosphere it's about whether or not we're going to have a sound government for the future and can we form that or not we won't be able to decide that this evening it's not about atmosphere and whether we can go and have a drink with one another it's about whether we can put together a government. so mr vine i'm not going to give you the floor. of our show i would just like to widen our view about it. and in the weeks

to come if we're going to have the course sense in your view french president has already said the day after tomorrow. tuesday he is going to be making i guess a policy statement on your. question would be more europe more lest you have a look so that's what i would like to hear about now yes we want to talk about this because one question for each of you mr might not start with you should you force able to force countries like poland to accept the number of refugees allocated to them definitely don't be offended let me correct just said there because once again he's trying to say that we are enemies of the european union or something of that manner we are clearly committed to the you know if you know you. know the many achievements the european single market is just one project of peace within europe and we support all of these things and therefore he said really not very nice to suggest that we're in this is

a political nonsense if it's not true we want your. fatherland . mean that it has a strong man and shadow minister that's autonomy for each member state said we only those things are dealt with only when the level. headed for so you mean the distribution of refugees wouldn't even be possible do be brief if a nation no says they want to having fewer of refugees. because then we might in germany that is their right so absolutely no. they shouldn't be force the european and that's when you should not be able to force me to or czech republic or distract you know take more questions than they want to. listen we want to wrap up here and we don't want to have long speeches is django dead or not to have. what do you think i've always been a fan of the shining and the human because it's

a good thing it means that we've had more freedom of movement within europe bassists has to be the borders of the e.u. they must be protected this is set out in a lot of stuff but i've never demanded anything. except for you lot to be implemented at the moment we have a situation that means that there are a number of external states that are not able to protect the external border properly which is why we have introduced. border controls again and this has to be continued it's not just about refugees here it's about the curative. dealer gangs of people where there's a warrant for their arrest and these border controls need to be continued until the external borders are sufficiently protected that is our position. and i believe the chancellor has supported it and. reject nato. but with the question of you do you support the project of the us. i mean. this is could be one of the things

that germany and france will be discussing soon. fiction. that moving towards a more into arm a minute more military intervention is not going to and has not made this world a safer place do if there is to be a more european point when the cooperation it has to be in stopping what is a export of weapons not buying more tanks together and we need to have more european cooperation and around combat on poverty but if our only response to the crisis of meaning in the year is to say with now going to be that you as my full time position of being a world policeman trying to solve the west problems i was a quite the opposite he you should be a force of civilian conflict prevention. support the idea of the french president to have a euro zone with one european finance minister. and one of the european budget. if

you have finance minister if you want to call this position of somebody who makes sure we adhere to what we agree financially and you want to call that person a finance minister then i think it's good if you're just going to manipulate this isn't the answer we're going to you know a budget for the euro zone. and member states in the euro zone and i think. you know we're talking about sixteen billion euro zone and also more in a budget of this kind of stuff from having money flow into france or italy for states consumption or you know to repair the damage done by dollars going in and italy obviously this is inconceivable for us and that would be a line in the sand long to be gone now as a country like the hungry. that doesn't agree with the decisions i made by the court not just yesterday to leave europe that is for well as much. if i look at.

then. countries such as hungry as a government that doesn't want to adhere to the rules of the union not least around of the refugee issue of the soul and just the same i think it's important that stages be begun by against these countries but if i see that there's an opposition in both of these countries and that this opposition is counting on them remaining just standing and we mustn't shut the door in their face they shouldn't have to leave york one we need to make sure that they adhere to the rules that they have to meet here to take charge comes here and strengthen the opposition in mice countries because there are plenty of people there who say we want to mock or seem to want it and i would be the last didn't they just say well the eastern europeans can't have this anymore and i would be the last to say we should give up hope because you. based on how the dirty but only be able to survive the crisis in this world if we

are in favor of this is that we all share that germany plays an important role in the climate issue in the refugee issue it's going to economic stability it's official without managements but on an escalation should. you have enough troops that there's a two year transition period after breakfast always calls with. the e.u. has made major concessions i think ms you know may is trying to. taking a gamble trying to gain an unfair position. i think we've been very generous you know about what i think about you has done a great deal. of governing. i think what's happening right now has everything to do with domestic policy in britain and nothing to do with the e.u. if you treat you is a community based on law and there are certain member states that you question this question whether it's based on a lot of hungry judges for me when hungry says when or band says. ruling by the

e.u. court of justice is not binding for me. and i think it's there so this kind of mindset that mate is presenting here that triggered the brakes in the first place so we mustn't let it go through before. this matter because if you're. president i think michelle has said that europe will grow together better if all member states have the euro do you support this idea. and we well do we need more europe do we need less you know i think we need the right you know we need a strong euro that is competitive that. will that offers jobs. that is what will convince citizens and everything this service we will approve everything that does not serve this well you will have to debate and in some cases controversially to fall. never guarding your specific question. has always been the

aim when the year was introduced to have minds on this essentially all member states have this tell you no currency then britain didn't want it now britain is leaving but if a country fulfills the criteria in the future we'll certainly want to have this country in the eurozone like by the three baltic states already in the czech republic saw the vignette they're already in was they were there actually not that many member states don't have the right and it's obviously down to the individual congress to decide these things but if they are filtering the conditions why not i mean with the schengen everyone has exactly the same if people have if countries have criteria they can because it is your blog area and we've had bad experience with ok you don't have the same opportunity and we're running out of time now one last question to you an answer that it's reef would be good you know how confident are you we've seen some of the difficulties the grand coalition is not on the cards like he doesn't want to be difficult to do after green it's to you how confident

are you we'll have a stable government by christmas but i'm always optimistic that's my nature. and for many years now i think being come. their way to have the power that was the end of the berlin round ladies and gentlemen thank you for it was coming along well there was an interesting debate and thank you for watching and have a good evening. you're watching the w.'s continuing live election coverage germany designs we've just been listening to the first post election face to face talks of the leaders of the parties which will be in germany's new parliament germany is just now beginning to come to terms with an election that has left both mainstream parties weaker the smaller parties somewhat stronger and for the first time in sixty years a far right party will be part of the new parliament these are seismic changes at

the end of a campaign that many labeled lackluster were not anymore there's plenty to discuss deconstruct and decipher tonight let's head over to the talk table where my colleague peter craven is standing by peter thanks so much brant yes and much to talk about the talks have blood been joined by a new team in the meantime melinda is with us chief political correspondent she's been with the soul evening we're also joined by venice on a veteran correspondent who goes all the way back to the government in bone. go rightly. political strategist consultant who works on the successful i should remind people the successful campaigns of barack obama in the united states we're going to be talking about the elephant or about that debate is a ritual in german politics after the elections every time about what was said there and what we make of it before we do that i'd just like to begin with then a zona introductory remarks to what you've been seeing today a correspondent i read earlier today said expect the unexpected today would have

been the what's been the biggest surprise or surprise is well what we saw today you can sum up and a few sentences angela merkel has been reelected but she will be much weaker because of the election result germany has moved to the right no doubt about it and germany will be less predictable in the future this is the result of these elections. germany has always striven as long as i have known modern germany to be predictable that is a big step back for germany in that sense yes because the real only option for a new government is the so-called john mica coalition and they will be formed by the christian democrats the greens and the f.d.p. and these three party blocs do not really fit together and that's why i'm saying we will see

a future in which germany will be less predictable and it will take quite a while to form this government ok what do you say about what we've seen today has germany been strengthened or weakened by today's election well angela merkel supported the seaview has the worst election result since nine hundred forty nine the s.p.d. has the worst results in its history so i think it is a clear shift from what we have before i think one of the things that are very clear is that martin schultz the candidate for the social democrats kmart hard saying they're not going to play any role in this next government so again as you just mentioned that leaves the jamaica coalition as the one the only viable option which of course does bring instability i think the one thing that we have to talk about is a new player in town which is of course the if the right wing populist that marched into the german parliament haven't been there before and they came in with thirteen percent so that's a big change for politics in general and it's going to be very interesting to see how all those parties adapt as they take up eighty plus seats in the next

parliament ok and we were all listening to what the party heavyweights had to say and it was quite intense melinda just give us a couple of sort of hints where we're going to go before i give you a couple of clips from the one aspect that was interesting we saw some very in life really intensive interaction of a kind we didn't see all that i said during the election campaign there is no i don't know a lot of more about this than i do because he was part of the bonn republic as it were but. some of it almost reminded me of the old days of billy brandt the great social democratic leader interacting with friends yosef strauss the very right wing head of the christian social union chancellor merkel's the leader. they were really at loggerheads here also and some of the same parties and then quite interesting as well to see how they interacted with the a.f.d. with their representative of this new right wing nationalist party that is coming into parliament there

a tough talk there as well and still wrecked statements to the f.t. you know you have a tactic that you use we've seen it used before you're going to try it again you say moderate stuff here but the fact is when it comes down to it you start moving the discourse closer and closer toward statements that are racist and or zina phobic and then the last thing that i thought was quite interesting was to see those potential coalition partners sniffing each other out circling around each other the chance listening very intently to her possible coalition partners were speaking and i agree it's not an easy mix those three parties the greens the business friendly free democrats and the conservatives but i do see some areas where i think they might be able to put together cooperation and even on europe i found mr lind sounding a little bit more pragmatic than he had been during the election campaign so those are all those points struck me thanks so much for that little let's let's listen to

just a wee little bit of what i'm going to merkel have to so you know then we'll talk about it just talking about values by the way. i believe that a stable german government is a value in itself i believe our entire parliamentary system is different from countries that have a lower inclusion of minority governments and i'm not sure before you can have. extraordinary talk you know we've just left our party headquarters all of a sudden rushed over here we're going to be going back to our party i'd stop quarters sleep on it for a night and then i hope you at least give us the chance to have a few exploratory talks at least as our plan and this is here for myself of the range that's the plan then surely we don't need to talk this evening. at all of the various options that are out there the main things. present chancellor presumably the future chancellor business as usual but it really can't be business as usual

kind of she's mooted of course she is but she was not become. like she all this is and. so we'll see she will approach the whole problem in her style. but nevertheless she is we can no doubt about it and so is her partner in bavaria which was that is where we see the real political disaster i mean below forty percent that's almost unheard of in bavaria we haven't seen that in food in more than fifty years so that will be all it's a very complex issue of how the two parties the c.d.u. and to see if you really unite again and how will they work together in the in the future and what does that mean in the john mica qualis isn't there a deep rift between the greens and the sea as you me just explained to the viewer

is that you make a coalition of a liberal free democrat stance their color yellow the conservatives black and who might be saying the greens green so you think that the jamaican flag and it's used widely in germany takes to denote to the coalition the vendor is talking about we'll hear about that a lot when tonight if you want to. sing that term well what if you want to follow german politics in the next couple of weeks and months are you despondent on how wounded is going to do you say oh she's definitely one that i mean she dropped eight point six percent the same c.s.u. her conservative party a party partner from the very top eleven points so that is of course because he will but i thought in this just this one as we call it was interesting is to see how martin schultz the social democratic candidates just came out swinging i mean this is something that we've been waiting for and missed. and during this whole debate trying to sort of just free to let go and i thought if that was the marshals

that we had seen during the t.v. debate that brant of course called a t.v. do it i think that might have been a different trajectory in this whole election cycle so i feel like they needed to be a clear positioning that is something that we've been missing and this is also what thomas among the head of the parliamentary parliamentary party of the speech he has been promising that as the s.p.d. is moving into opposition they're going to be looking to polarize and they're going to be very clear about the diaper differences that they're seeing to the age of fifty the right wing party that's entering the bonus but also to this new coalition the jamaica coalition you know it was he says i mean what was kind of interesting was seeing how the f.t. seems to clarify everybody's mind suddenly everybody can look very noble the s.p.d. has to go into opposition because they need to be the leaders of the opposition with this right wing party in parliament they need to be there and then the others as well undoubtedly they mean it but there's also it offers

a great opportunity for all the other parties to say you know we have to raise the standard now of democratic debate and we're going to be leading this fight and clearly it had a major impact on the other parties as well as we could hear in that debate in that discussion fascinating observations from those three things for most were to go back to front now. live coverage of the german elections we'd like to say hello to all of our viewers around the world especially those in australia the united states and those watching us on twitter live stream it's good to have you with us here's what we know so far on this election night the preliminary results of the german election so i'm going to merkel's conservatives with a comfortable lead but despite their celebrations they've taken a massive cut in support merkel admitted that she had hoped for a better result her main challenger my. and shoals of the social democrats has conceded defeat after the party's worst ever results and he has ruled out joining

a new coalition government and the far right alternative for germany d.f.d. is on course to be the third biggest party in the new parliament that's according to preliminary results only these are not yet the official results and speaking of results and numbers let's go over now to monica as she has got a full breakdown of the latest predicted results monica and david brant because obviously it's still moving maybe the changes on tube but here and there it could be a little bit of a surprise perhaps i mean when we look at the results as a whole at the first side not much has changed i'm going backwards did you see as you still of course the strongest party with thirty three percent of the votes the s.p.d. follows with twenty point seven percent of the votes the left party and the green party both hovering around the nine percent the business friendly f.t.p. the free democratic party at ten point six percent so again it has to be mentioned

that definitely back in parliament now after being out of it for four years and the f.t. the far right alternative for germany for the very first time definitely one can say probably by now in parliament with thirteen percent in terms of gains and losses while it's quite obvious that the largest gains can all the largest losses rather can be found with angela merkel's c.d.u. c.s.u. down eight point five percent s.p.d. also shared quite a substantial amount of votes yet down five percent left party in greens not much loss not much gain pretty much the same as four years ago f.t.p. though five point eight percent gains that's what brought them back into parliament and the f.t. here with eight point three percent. well a very clear message there here in the german blunder stock in terms of seeds now

this is where it's getting interesting because obviously there are quite a lot of seeds that can be shared a total of six hundred ninety and the largest the major the live show here goes to the c.d.u. c.s.u. with two hundred and thirty nine seats followed by the s.p.d. with one hundred fifty seats the left party and the green party both with sixty five seats the three democrats with seventy seven seats and the f.t. the blue ones down there with ninety four seats and this is where it gets interesting because if we just play a little game here we have the possible coalitions that we could build we need three hundred forty six seats in order to be able to actually govern in order to have a majority of the c.d.u. c.s.u. alone can't do it so they need help if they turn to the f.t.p. which is their tried and tested coalition partner they're already getting quite close actually to that majority they're locking thirty seats at the moment and

things are moving still this evening if they do join with the greens and we have this much talked about jamaica coalition then yes that is a clear mandate to govern this could be a governing coalition there are very few alternatives the s.p.d. already ruled out it doesn't want to go back into a governing coalition if just for the sake of it the s.p.d. wanted to govern itself it would have to join forces with the left party perhaps with the greens the two of them governed already under. one thousand nine hundred ninety eight to two thousand and five of course and if they then said all right we still need someone else let's do it with the f.t.p. well that would be a first but that at least would be a possible possibility even though it would be not a very. likely juan we will have more numbers as the evening goes by and things can still move bret michael thank you very much c.d.u.

as we just heard has been badly bruised a loss of more than eight percent that's according to the preliminary results still the c.d.u. remains the largest party in parliament and there were cheers at their headquarters when the first exit poll was announced at around six pm local time it puts miracle on course for a fourth term as german chancellor them still have a tricky task forming a new coalition government will address her supporters at c.d.u. headquarters earlier here's part of what she said. there is no need to mince words here we would like to have had a slightly better result that's absolutely clear i don't know that you mustn't forget that it's been a particularly challenging term of office that we've just concluded and that's why i'm so pleased that with you we've reached the strategic goal of our election campaign. we've emerged as the strongest party the c.d.u. with the c.s.u.

it's now up to us to form a government and no government can be formed against us. and there you hear the german jazzer talking about the strongest party but she herself could be one of its weakest links less polygamy shellac of her she is standing by at the christian democrats headquarters here in berlin good evening to you michelle and so let's talk about this this topic of america the wounded chancellor tonight. is it was quite interesting we just saw her defeated challenger from the social democrats martin souls calling her the biggest loser of the evening and they might well be right she's been dealt a severe blow over the past twelve years she actually managed to increase her support base considerably and then this now losing because it's quite significantly down from those forty one percent the cd you got last time around and this being so

direct the linked to migration policy this party the city you had seen a million voters who most likely cross over cross over that line that red line the c.d.u. wants to draw between them and the far right if tea party that raises a lot of questions you're seeing someone on stage there who still has a lot of soul searching to do on where they went wrong clearly she wasn't really interested in doing that tonight delivering more a sober and collected plan how to move forward rather than really recognizing the depth of this that she and her chances at those three tons of just for c. . and micheaux what about the possibility of a minority government is that a realistic option for i'm going to america tonight. but she wouldn't really be drawn on that all this evening that is seems to be

a rather unlikely scenario particularly also because we are seeing of a broader more of a fragmentation that in german parliament it's unlikely that the c.d.u. should have any kind of interest to make its governing coalition that it will have to form any more unstable than it will already be because let's just face it with trying to bring the green party on board the free democrats also on board for this to mike a coalition that will take some time that will take. why it's a bit of fighting and with everybody knowing that that will probably have to be the ops and with the social democrats taking themselves out of the game having taken and having basically lost out during that ground coalition period where many of the successes were seen as mackerels that could be a different difficult period indeed difficult indeed the conservatives the f.t.p. and the greens are certainly not what we would call natural bedfellows that is for

sure michelle. at the c.d.u. had orders tonight in berlin thank you very much well the conservatives losses have mainly been affected the far right party the f.t. the third biggest party now they've won just over thirteen percent of the vote a result that will see a far right party enter power parliament for the first time in more than sixty years and they did so running on an openly anti islam anti immigrant platform i'm going forward the a.f.d.c. as one of its priorities will be to launch an investigation into legal breaches by uncle americal in relation to germany's refugee crisis. i want to pull in our correspondent now assuming someone's gone there she is standing by in their green in northern germany she's with leif erik home from the alternative for germany who was trying to unseat america in miracles constituency sumi good evening

to you. good evening brant jett just to give you an update one of the reasons that we are here is that the f.t. in the past has had a very strong showing in the state and we do have the most recent projections that the c.d.u. is the largest most successful successful party in the state with thirty five percent of the vote in the a.f.d. is the second largest party with a little over nineteen percent of the vote as you mentioned. was trying to take away the direct mandate that angle medical had in her own district to take that district away from her to win in that district that hasn't happened it seems that she won a little over forty four percent of the vote in her district that means she was able to hold onto it and a little over a twenty percent but we do have him here with us and we did want to speak with him since he is the leading candidate for the f.t. here in west palm renia. zihuatanejo there been disconsolate and you want. to take the direct line nature the chancellor even if you didn't manage to do that . the federal chancellor would have made an offer why when somebody just go soft on

it that i should not have managed to win a mandate is that what it was and the right way to go it would have been a very strong a symbol and i was of course she would win that chancellor but it would have been a symbol of all the dissatisfaction of the citizens i mean everybody knows about that dissatisfaction anyway and at least we've managed to make her lose a significant number of votes. she's lost twelve percentage points in london and our result is higher than the set average were not on her yes she is very much when i first asked nations came out and you saw that if he has more than thirteen percent nationwide what can we expect from the f.d.a. and the opposition because he'll be a part of me which they're very happy that we have i mean it becomes the fifth largest party and that will enlighten the debate that's good for democracy if you want this but i'm not means it also normalised the party spectrum that we have and you're also and i think that support. if our country uncomfortable we've heard that

from our citizens during the election campaign they want an opposition it's you who is a very tough for us to modify sections that will speak for the small i mean think about the rescue package and the european context or the opening of the voters by the chancellor there will be debates about the us eventually decided to end a burka exactly for that if they was a middle class conservative. however within your heart they are also some people who make you right wing comments or as a nationalist comments what do you say about what mr hucker has said that there should be a turnaround about japanese culture of remembrance like he does now for he was highly criticized for what he said and he corrected what he said he. did not what i think is important that we don't do in the only always talk about our ph well if you dart here is this part of german history but we should also focus on what's positive in german history we need positive options for identification also for

young generation or most is difficult so that means we honeyed and more differentiated picture does not see of course people still have to be taught and have to learn about some of the not separate ways and young people have to know what happens about we also have to look at the positive moments in our history becomes ardently about what you said i was criticised for it but still he's a member of the if he is that and correct of this before they forget there is a procedure to expel them from the party i don't think that will be successful because the legislation governing parties is very strict almost without i don't think it would be possible to expel him i would have expelled him i think that would have been better. off out for him because like that's how you said before. that tried when nationalists and exam comments are made in the f.t. i found the garland say for example that germany should be proud of the achievements of the vast soldiers and the two world wars research prior to that you misunderstood what he said very clearly true we have to you know look at it from a more differentiated angle almost of course. see the damage has committed crimes

and we have to keep talking about if we're going on to sweeping this under the rock you said german soldiers of the holes also some major achievements just like in other nations and that's why military academies on over there including in the us. defense you mention things the chief minister michael. thank you stand in brant and if you're not you're at the party is celebrating behind us in the local office here in chile and this is for them definitely successful evening all right susan is going to their intro thank you very much sumi we'd like to take you now back here to berlin i'm joined by my colleagues to show auto parts she is standing by at the headquarters of the alternative for germany the f.t. and my other colleague is funny from char she is standing in alexanderplatz here in berlin where a demonstration has amassed throughout the course of the evening against the a.f.d. show ought to let me just start with you briefly. the notion of the a.f.d.

being the major disrupter in the new german parliament. is that being discussed there where you are and are or do people see that completely in a positive sense as. well i mean d.m. presented itself for the team members here that i could talk to tonight presented itself clearly as a opposition party that is going to rebel against the established fanti in folly i'm and so i mean we've seen many faces of the am teaching nine hundred going on one of the leading candidates said we are going to hunt down on macro we have seen another face from another leading candidate alice vital who said we are going to be a constructive opposition and the party needa. get moisten trying to establish his party as a serious opposition party in this so-called elephant round that we just saw also on the w.

so very many faces in the big question moving forward is what kind of opposition party is the a.f.d. going to be we know that they are on the far right that they are nationalists they've been campaigning on that platform as no pluralist as well with slogans such as new germans we are going to create them ourselves there is lum does not belong to germany and we know that they are most certainly shaking up the political landscape one say are in parliament major disruptors that is for sure let me pull in the funny to charnel of alexander plods on funny the protests there are people there talking about what we heard earlier today that the a.d.f. deed now that it will be in power would want to prosecute the german chancellor and as one of its leaders said tonight maybe put her in jail. actually you don't really hear people talking here brandi rather scream and chant the same slogans and that is not just out and that the entire studio brylin hates the that is of course not the case considering the fact that even also

a lot of voters here believe in voting for a of the beach which ends up making them the third. largest biggest force the main opposition party basically the new parliament so you don't hear distant discussions right now it's too early for that because these people who are here that you hear behind me and see behind me are simply angry and they are shocked about this result and they want to express their anger right now as you can hear behind me it's a mixed crowd by the way you sort of young people you also see families to the children you also see right there the i g b t flag the lot of people here who are worried that the yes the opposition may be that the same sex marriage may be revoked that this point brad we can hear is a lot of emotion as you can hear behind me but no real discussion at this point as far as this crowd is concerned you know i mean we see is a sizable crowd there as well as a sizable police presence as well for the charge alexander plans in berlin and at

the headquarters of the f.t. here in berlin to both of you thank you very much. you're watching the w.'s live coverage of the german elections germany decides here's a reminder of what we know so far as we come upon a quarter to ten p.m. projected results show i'm going to medicals conservatives with a comfortable lead but despite the celebrations they've taken a massive cut in support more than a million votes going to the a.f.d. michael admitted that she had hoped for a better result her main challenger more insults of the social democrats has conceded defeat after his party's worst ever results and he has ruled out joining a new coalition government with merkel's conservatives and the far right alternative for germany is on course to be the third biggest party in the new parliament that of course is according to the project the results only we still do

not have the official results just yet. so a disappointing evening for the social democrats the s.p.d. here you see a rather subdued crowd at the party's headquarters when the exit polls were analogy earlier this evening and based on those results we now have s.p.d. leader martin schultz taking his party out of the running to become a grand coalition partner with conservatives because i wanted to replace the current chancellor and this is why i was not a minister and that i believe that is consistent and right and this is why i've recommended to the social democratic leadership that we. go into this current government. as an opposition party. well with the s.p.d. ruling out a grand coalition repeat one party that could play a role in germany's next government is the greens they increased their vote share

to almost nine percent but the party's cochairman as dimia was circumspect about the night's results. jemison mia you have missed one of your goal was to become third strongest party but at the same time you were better than last time which was also a goal is that enough to have this good mood here but of course i'm happy about our election result but at the same time after it makes it i'm very unhappy with the election result of the a fifty we're living in a divided country so that brings along responsibility for all of us to take over responsibility to deal with divided society and everybody means everybody that includes the social democrats i don't think this is the time to say that we don't talk everybody has to be ready to take over responsibility. coming back to your own party you already said you have to talk is this now a moment where the other parties have to join forces and form this john my coalition for the first time it depends on content suits the same what was said

during the election campaign and nothing has changed we are to party and the election results proves me right that is fighting against climate change so without a clear policy for de carbon ization i cannot enter a coalition second we're pro european that means no anti european policy with the green party that's impossible for us and the first point is a just society so this is the framework and if we see movement towards our direction we're ready to take over responsibility and if not we're taking over our seats in opposition when was the last word to the f.t. you have already mentioned it what would be the strategy and what went wrong first of all that they got that strong and what's your strategy to deal with them now i think we have to deal with the problem so there are problems with integration policy there are problems with islam islam but we have to do it in a way that doesn't divide our society and it doesn't target people and therefore it's clear democrats have to stay together and i don't think we will get stiff the

smaller if we take over their language as some politicians have done that only strengthens them thank you very much. and with the social democrats ruling themselves out of a coalition merkel's most likely option for forming a new government would be in coalition with the f.t.p. and as you just heard with the greens let's go now to my colleague simon young he is at the f.t.p. headquarters here in berlin and for the invite the marquee you just saw is with the greens also here in berlin gentlemen good evening to you fabio let's start with you i mean if you're looking at things from a green point of view who's going to be hardest to get in bed with the c.d.u. the conservatives or the f.t.p. . first of all it's the f.t.p. generally speaking i mean for the greens as one delegate told me here it's like fire and water for the greens traditionally the f.t.v.

the liberals is a neo liberal industry friendly climate change ignoring party and for a long time the prime anime in the political arena but then again does also in america this party the c.d.u. her other partner the bavarian see ass-u. and that's maybe even a stronger opponent has been a stronger opponent in the past for the greens so there are two very tough partners in bed with for the greens and it's really hard to say american and her c.v. you are probably the smallest problems but this is probably about the c s you or the bavarians and the liberals. play a difficult role for the greens in those talks. ok simon young at the f.t.p. headquarters i mean it's almost like night of the walking dead in a way isn't it the f.d.p. being resurrected from its its four year. missing in action if you want

from parliament it was kicked out of parliament in the last elections now it's back in does it have the leverage that its leader mr lynn or seems to think that it halves moving in and going into the. actions for a new government. were britain and the f.t.p. the free democrats are pretty relaxed here tonight they're very pleased of course that they've come back as you say they are the comeback kids the see having narrowly failed to get into the bundestag four years ago and they've now got over ten percent so they're firmly they're well over the five percent hurdle to get into parliament and they're relaxed in the sense that you know they don't need to form a government it is for angle americal now to to make that appeal to maybe make the suggestion formally that there could be a so-called jamaica coalition with conservatives democrats and greens and then the the f.t.p.

leader the see this evening has been saying that he will approach that task responsibly in the interests of his party but also in the interests of germany as a whole and will try to find common ground with the conservatives there shouldn't be too much of a problem they shared coalitions many times in the past but also with the greens where there are lots of clear differences such as on cutting taxes for business such as on migration policy and perhaps also on the whole question of europe those are the key areas where there are difficulties of finding common ground with the greens but to the f.t.p. say they're going to look for it yeah it's not going to be easy that is for sure simon young and fabulous on the mark both of you gentlemen thank you very much. all right enough for the talking right now let's talk numbers monica is here now with the latest exactly let's look at some of the key numbers the brand the latest projected results here and not trying to make it too exciting we

still have obviously c.d.o. c.s.u. here in the lead thirty three percent for angle of eccles party s.p.d. unchanged at twenty point six percent the left party at nine point one percent the greens at eight point nine percent and so no big changes here in the last hour the same pretty much goes for the business friendly free democrats party at ten point six percent so they're back in the bundestag idea the f.d.a. losing ever so slightly but still a very strong showing obviously currently twelve point eight percent clearly they will go into the bundestag interesting zero in the east germany the former east germany the votes for the f.t. are twice as high as in the west so there is food for thought there print it's interesting how the votes divide there along the east west axis in this country monica thank you very much but we have heard we have heard what the parties in the

analysts have said about tonight's election results now let's turn to what voters have been saying and for that we're joined by our social media editor karl yes karl what's the conversation online tonight. yes germans really talking about this election of course it's a big one in germany one way to take a pulse of the electorate is to look at what they are searching for on google we have some of the top questions that germans have for google and here they are and number one they want to know who voted for the a.f.d. they are curious about the demographics of that far right vote on number two what happens if there's no coalition maybe people that worried about whether this german government can come together and number three what is the jamaica coalition and the answer as we know is the colors of the jamaica flag black for cd you green for the green party yellow for the f.d.p. in fact there's so much interest in a potential jamaica coalition that the only country in the world currently googling

jamaica more is actually jumping into german voters they're also analyzing the aftermath here they want to know what does this all means of here's one as a people you know in the next parliament there will be some disputes you have to make out you have s.p.d. against medical you have the right against the left and it's going to be exciting one group of voters or that's that's not so excited brant has paid a voters and here is one here who is speaking out and saying look everyone in this party should finally understand that a grand coalition only leads to the marginalization of the s.p.d. we've seen those those terrible numbers coming in and then the polling results really low twenty's we have one more s.p.d. voter here who says hey dear s.p.d. actually writing directly to the party on twitter i hope that you use this opportunity now speaking of maybe the s.p.d. being in the opposition to shift to the left that's where we're from and that's where we belong s.p.d.

voters many other voters are in germany really online just trying to make sense of these results as it's coming in yeah and it's good to karl that you are showing us that people are interested in what the jamaica coalition is melinda and i think we spent a good three or four hours tonight melinda trying to explain that to people as well so yeah there are googling it as well for. the jamaicans are going to be very fond of the germans after tonight. but as always thank you very much. and here's a reminder of the top stories that we're following for you on this election night here in germany chance i'm going to medical except for a fourth term in office following parliamentary elections projections over conservatives as the biggest party with around thirty three percent of the vote but they've suffered heavy losses and they will be forced to form a new coalition government and the right wing alternative for germany has made history by entering the bundestag the german parliament rejected results show the party is the third largest in the new parliament the f.t.'s lead candidate alice

vida says her party will seek a parliamentary investigations into what she calls quote legal breaches made by uncle americal with her open door policy for refugees in two thousand and fifteen. you're watching t w news live from berlin we're going to take a short break we come back there will be more news more coverage of this historic election day and in about thirty minutes i'll be back to take you through the day is spent. i don't want to look at the video it was unbelievable. you know. that if the behind enemy shows folks most. excellent.

i'm. yeah absolutely demolished us. the phosphor tonight horton if you see oh yes getting the offer for this. cabinet officer also has been the cause and so i think you're. right a lot as moment. when. i love my daughter immediately we're going to coming up all of them by you two miles. that tell us that these people the other one. was a once in office

a processing i psec i don't want the tax year i don't know about or ask and i start so if they're going to say senator. everybody has a thing i'm going to suck up. some . sun yeah thunder. to see if it's i'm all for the message of the epithets. damn i said why did i miss my answer. that's last week. you sent me a phenomenon starting october fifteenth on t.w. and on mine.

as did every news coming to you live from berlin i'm going marco wins a fourth term. but it is a chastening evening for the country's main party. the city with the sea yes. it's tough to form a government putting

a positive spin on what looks like heavy losses for her party but she wasn't the only leader left looking shape this. is what i have recommended to the s.p.d. leadership that we went to the opposition. americal saying challenge our large scholz conceives defeat after projecting results in the case the worst ever showing for his center left social democrats. and a triumph for the upstarts of german politics the far right alternative for germany . which humility because millions. more on that and all the results coming up tonight with correspondents around the country.

i'm sarah harman and welcome to d.w. special coverage of the german election america is on course for her fourth term as chancellor it's been a bruising night for the country's main parties both merkel's conservatives and sholto social democrats projected for big losses meanwhile the far right are the night's big winners let's dive in now and take a detailed look at the numbers so far so let's pull up some projected results here as they stand ten pm in berlin but you can see there in block that's miracles conservatives pulling at thirty three percent in red the s.p.d. twenty percent in pink the left party nine percent in green the greens eight point nine percent the f.d.p. polling at ten percent right now the a.f.d. at twelve point eight percent other fringe parties there on the screen in gray

collectively about five percent now these are projected results they're not final yet they'll become final in the course of the evening so one of those projected results mean for germany and the world for some answers i'm going to head over the table now and talk with chief political correspondent linda crane she'll have some analysis about what we can make of these numbers and what we need to watch for over the course of the fighting. linda thanks for joining me in the studio a big night miracles conservatives looking like right now they don't have the numbers to govern alone the s.p.d. has said we're not going into coalition with them what are the choices she has only one choice and that is this coalition that's been called the jamaica coalition we've been explaining it all evening so i'll explain it again jamaica refers to the colors of the jamaican flag that's green yellow and black and in this case those

are the colors of the three parties the green party the business friendly free democrats and they would be returning out of parliament for the first time after a four years in the wilderness and then of course the chancellors christian democrats and their bavarian sister party the christian social union that is the only coalition where the math would work so what that means for the chancellor is that she's going to have some tough negotiating ahead because essentially those two parties will play hard to get they will try to get their conditions through and they indicated already this evening that it's going to be a very tough fight a very hard negotiation there was talk of it possibly lasting till christmas or longer because they are rather incompatible in many respects we saw some sniffing out of the last civil room for agreement during this meeting of the party heads this evening on television but it's going to be a long tough road however nobody wants new elections and merkel has already given

some statements on television let's take a listen to what she had to say just a few hours ago. i bear with us for tribal that i was. i believe that a stable german government is a value in itself i believe our entire parliamentary system is different from countries that have a long tradition of minority governments and i'm not sure before i even had a single exploratory talk you know we've just left our party headquarters all of a sudden rushed over here we're going to be going back to our party i'd stop quarters sleep on it for a night and then i hope you at least give us the chance to have a few exploratory talks at least as our plan and this is if it myself of arranged that's the plan then surely we don't need to talk this evening. at all of the various options that are out there the main things. well you heard the woman surely

we don't need to talk to save think about all the various options that are out there with this seems like classic americal this wait and see approach give me time a very calculated patient approach that's worked for her in the past you think it's going to work for her now well certainly as i said these negotiations will take a good deal of time there's a lot of positioning to be done a lot of sounding out so in this case she's quite right this is you know you certainly can't begin to do that in a television debate that lasts for an hour nonetheless they were sounding each other out this evening it was quite interesting they did get into details of some aspects of policy talking to some degree about their varying opinions on where things might be going with policy toward the e.u. the free democrats that business friendly party i mentioned they had had some very tough things to say about the e.u. prior to the election during the campaign they looked like they were rolling that back of bit in this case they would need to do that if they are going to form any kind of

a coalition with the green party the green party is much more pro europe much more interested in european integration that's just one of many areas where it's going to be tough but the fact is the presence of this far right party in parliament means that all of the other parties have a new sense of responsibility perhaps or at least they like to look noble by saying so and in this case what that means for the free democrats they would have actually liked to be in the opposition they're not sure i think that they are quite ready to govern they have very few people with any governmental experience in their ranks so this is not their ideal situation but you did hear them saying this evening we will rise to this responsibility we will step up to the plate if that's necessary and it looks like it will be speaking of the opposition though the s.p.d. and their lead candidate martin schultz who we just saw a picture on there earlier they have said no chance for a grand coalition that's what germany currently has they're not going to do it again and again the opposition seems like it could be a boon for the s.p.d.m.

anyway as i want to get your take on that but first let's take a listen to what martin schultz and sell the party's leave canada said earlier this evening. opposition in the phase that we are in at the moment is crucial. or do we just want to leave opposition matters to the others of course we will i do not believe that we are going to see the christian democrats working with the f.t.p. and the greens and if so we will be in opposition to them i mean. mrs maxwell is going to rubberstamp anything you like don't worry and i'll put up with everything i know how these coalition negotiations will happen you know michael will make any concession to you to stay in power and that's not hard for her you know somebody calls her hoover of ideas she just sucks out other people's ideas i think that's a very good idea. and i believe that our job in germany is to ensure that there's that confrontation that this country needs desperately. those on the

right and on the left of democracy in this country need to give citizens of this country a plan for the future as michael hasn't done it we have. merkel is a hoover of ideas do you think that's a fair characterization it's certainly a funny one he's referring to the fact that there is a major structural problem for the junior partner in any grand coalition a grand coalition that we have had for the past four years it puts two parties together who are natural adversaries and the junior partner is at an inherent disadvantage in that kind of a constellation because in fact in the past four years the s.p.d. was able to get a number of the planks of its party platform through and yet the grand coalition takes credit for that so that is essentially what he was referring to it was quite interesting actually his whole manner in this debate that we just saw he attacked

the chancellor with a vehemence we never saw throughout the election campaign he had said to her a number of times during the campaign you never engage in the fight but in a way he didn't either and in fact there was a headline and one of the major german magazines this evening saying martin schultz launches the election campaign you know here it was finally fiery and as you say that could be good for the s.p.d. in opposition if they can sharpen their profile once again perhaps moving more clearly to the left on some of the social justice issues that are important to their voters that all might help them we'll see how it plays out but certainly we saw there an angry martin schulz he told the chances she was the biggest loser of all tonight but in fact to some degree he was a sore loser he was angry but it gave him a lot of fire in that debate certainly did a lot of fire in that debate there can be plenty more to talk about linda grant thanks for taking us through some of these initial steps as we work up this project

and results we can cross now to this cd you party headquarters where my colleague michele a cosigner is standing by for us. michelle i'm going to say the state is a might have been quite a bit of fire. if you go ahead sorry go ahead you seem like you know what you want to tell us well that might have been a lot of. well i wanted to respond to melinda that because we might have seen a lot of fire from martin shields tonight but we did see the german chancellor once again perform performs best as the kind of teflon machall as a response to what can only be described as a slap in the face from the voters despite coming out as the strongest party this is by no means a victory a victory looks very different indeed while her response is basically listing all the problems that the country faces ahead and focusing on those she didn't do impromptu soul searching and she didn't map out some kind of brown vision and that's the very criticism that she received from martin schultz as well during this

campaign it's called macklin through it's going step by step and it also so martin so also one point and see her as someone who almost endangers democracy in a sense and in custody down on the democratic debate now she's in for a very story which is indeed and she was here just a few minutes ago in the states or in the room behind me on stage preparing her own cecil for a very tough weeks ahead basically meaning the c.d.u. needs to form a coalition most likely to make a coalition and that is a lot less fun than it sounds and to make a coalition is a lot less fun than it sounds that's the deal with the city you had quarters michele thanks for bringing us up to date. while we also have a correspondent at the s.p.d. party headquarters let's cross over now to thomas sparrow. thomas get a wire that will air i opinion it well it was i agree with melinda what she said

just a few minutes ago if we look at martin shows during that round a few minutes ago that was martin shows a defacto leader of the opposition doing what he was criticized as not doing the whole campaign setting the tone putting the chancellor on the spot differentiating his policies from those of other parties that is something that the s.p.d. will try to do moving forward as they present themselves now as the strongest party in opposition that's something that obviously the party leaders and the party members will be deciding in detail in the next few days what their proposals will be what their focus will be but from what we saw from martin shows today we can clearly say that he is going to to attack two sets of political groups on the one hand angela merkel her conservatives on the other hand the far right a d. that's something that he also said right here behind where we're standing in the

headquarters of the social democrats where his focus will be in the next few years all right what about martin short i mean in many ways he's failed to deliver as a leader what's the feeling towards him right now at the party headquarters are is day is number one do you think people here have been talking about that. well and it's also been something that has been discussed here least from some of the top s.p.d. officials there we were able to talk to they seem to be behind martin shows they seem to be behind martin shows among other things because martin chose was chosen as the candidate of the social democrats with one hundred percent of support from the party delegates earlier this year and that's something that many people here recognize maybe martin shows is not a strong candidate to the outside world but when it comes to talking to some of the people here some of the members he is certainly someone who's viewed favorably and does something that he can probably play. also forward when it comes to the to the negotiations within the party to what the focus will be when it comes to forming

that party in opposition something that martin schultz wants to lead and something that he clearly said today that he intends to present as that reorientation of the party in the next few months and years all right that's thomas sparrow standing by at the as pay day party headquarters thomas thanks for sharing the feeling there. and we also have charlotte potts and fanny for shar out about for us both of them covering the a.f. day charlotte pastas at the a.f.d. party headquarters. on the streets near alexanderplatz where hundreds of demonstrators and police are gathering charlotte let's start with you they are day ensuring parliament for national parliament for the very first time what's the feeling there. will be a of d.c.s. itself as a clear winner of this election on the one hand because even the most optimistic members had only counted on a on

a written on an election result around eleven twelve percent and it looks like right now in the end result will be a little higher than that but on the other hand they are also seeing themselves as a winner because they attribute in the fact that i'm glad machall the conservatives had to take that badly off a loss they attribute the the fact to their policy to their anti-medical and time migrant campaign that they think was very successful in mobilizing voters in this election so the mood here is quite happy the leading candidate of the gallon has been trying to fire up his supporters saying we are going to take germany back and he has been saying they are going to pose quite a radical opposition trying to hunt down the america on the other hand we've seen also on the faces of the a of d. tonight more moderates saying they want to be

a constructive opposition so really the big question here tonight was what kind of opposition do they want to be more radical more moderate more constructive how are they going to. be and paul human the matter of fact as they ran on a very nationalist right platform with slogans such as new germans we are going to make them ourselves and islam doesn't belong to germany and this is see. de that is making it into paul human and this is probably how they are going to present themselves as an opposition they're all right that's the feeling inside the party headquarters shall apos thank you funny for charice outside that building on the streets where people are demonstrating funny what's going on. all the motions are running really high as you can hear behind me and see beyond the fact that people screaming got chanting that the entire city will go and hates berlin now of course if you look at the numbers as you know it was the case because the people here in berlin had voted for the alternative for german party for the far

right party a lot of people came here to demonstrate to say that they completely disagree with the fact that the far right party given the german history can end to the german parliament so you wonder what the mixture is all of these crowds it's the next people from the green party but also from the left party you see a lot of young people also some of them who didn't even go to cast their ballot but like here right now i mean the little people say maybe this is something positive about the entire situation that the far right party of the answer is the father but that is the people actually wake up and go to the streets and demonstrate all right so there's a four day inside a empty head quarters and a protest outside charlotte ponce and funny for char following that story for us thanks to both of you. toss over to my colleague aaron al first now he has for this election thank you very much yes a historic night a slap in the face for

a story close to both. the social democrats and a right wing party populist party in parliament let's talk about with my guests will it stay in the political. lobbyist if i might say so and consultant and muslim inc senior editor at the talk of spiegel a daily broadsheet here in berlin mudd let's start with you. thirteen percent for far right party is this our brags that moment is our trump moment how big is this very short so no it isn't i mean the bracks a referendum changed the course of great britain in a dramatic way the election of donald trump changed the course of the united states and the world now we have thirteen percent for a party that many people are disliked but we have thirty five percent or thirty seven percent of people who didn't vote for them so i don't think it will be a bracket of trouble but is it how much of a shock is this for german politicians a shock i mean it was not expected they did better than extend most polls. show

them it's always a tricky issue in germany because the right wing's because of the german past and so on and so on it is always a shock if the right wing in this for the first time since decades that right wing populist party made it to the element do you agree is this not such a big deal well i don't know whether the big deal but it's showing that i'm glad naca and they have a bit astonished as her party always addressed as the conservative party she is no longer this party is no longer conservative she moved the party in the direction of the social democrat that's part of her success but also part of a well defeat an eight percent loss this is really touching the hardcore of the party but this vote for the a.f.p. you're a political consultant a lobbyist you bring. politics an ex journalist and bring politics and business together that's what you do. isn't this vote for the heir of the also vote against

the elites or the perceived elites in this country. and if you look at these are gay that is a great scandal for example don't go but they have a point critics if they say business or politics are in bed together there is something apart from the refugee problem which the di was profiting from it is that class political the political class here is consistent no law. they were in the sixty's seventy's and eighty's or in other countries for all reet breaches of society all professions it is a sort of political sociologist political science people it is no law we're representing the whole part of the people relation and though they feel misrepresented and they simple example if someone is elected to the house of commons no matter what party comes from it is something to be a member of the house if you are elected to the bonus that there is a sort of disgrace and it does well as it was to be the crucial point it's not so

much about elites but it's about representation i mean the beginning of the refugee policy of angela merkel and all in the fall of two thousand there was no party in parliament that were representing the criticism towards the million or a million above refugees so what west a democratic country could say we let an influx of a million refugees not having a right wing populist party for at least ten or fifteen percent and it's not it's not completely new in europe other european countries have used you know there is no there is no party in in the parliament that says we go into any kind of caution or work together with the f.t. so there their support is very limited abilities to influence politics is very limited and the reason why they talk about these make our coalition is. the biggest opposition party and if the grand coalition has before seven democrats and christian democrats form a government the biggest non party of there is the f.d.a.

and then by german law they. put the put in charge the chairman of the ways and means committee which is one of the most influential political committees and second there are the main opposition speakers who want that and that's one of the reasons why one of the reasons why the grand coalition is not continue but a new coalition is formed if we look at the reasons why the right. populace became so strong in these elections the media has played a certain role in this matter do you think the media has treated the fifty fairly in the run up to the election it's not just the media would say it's a big part of the society didn't have no experience of dealing with right wing populist and so there was some kind of calling them nazis or always putting them into the right wing history denying a corner but i'm less than parts they are at least in part it doesn't help to call the nazis in any way no because there are some people who are just scared by

a million would think maybe they are afraid of the jobs of the economy i mean legitimate fears if you call them nazis to supporting them then you make some kind of oh that if they call me an artist maybe i'll vote for them so there's a kind of reaction i would some kind of hyperventilating anti-fascists reaction towards these groups that are not have not been helpful and the other parties used this argument all the time they're fascist to put them in one corner that has mean there is very little in the weeks we saw something like a combined effort for all the parties to say our biggest aim in this election is to keep them as low as possible and let me give them a lot of strength of all the parties are united against one party that means vote for the party that's the best you best way of showing some kind of protest you very briefly how will work in parliament change and how should we have to be treated in parliament very briefly if you can as a normal party as all the others i personally am convinced that splits in that

party are going to share to show up in the party because they have shown in the past they had party congress half of the deputies went out of the party congress so let's just play it by parliamentary rules. clearly state and muslim you thank you very much and now it's back to sarah with new facts and figures i believe. share with you the latest projected results from the german election here's the results as they stand but you can see there in black america is conservatives polling at thirty three percent the s.p.d. twenty point six percent in the us fifty has already said they will not be entering in to a grand coalition they are going to be the main opposition. in pink you see the left party nine point one percent the greens their eight point nine percent in yellow the f.d.p. ten point six percent the a.f.d.

entering german parliament for the first time over a national level twelve point eight percent the other minor parties they're taking up about five percent in total so who's gained and who's lost since last year let's take a look at what's changed. you can see on this graph merkel's conservatives are the big losers of the evening they're down eight and a half percentage points based on the projected results as we have the right now nearly ten thirty in berlin s.p.d. down five percent the left party gained ever so slightly half a percent there you see in pink the greens also up ever so slightly half a percent the f.d.p. one of the big winners of the evening up almost six percent there and of course the a.f.d. up just over eight percent there are some of the big winners of the evening that's the results. as they've changed from last year now we can take

a look at the seats now germany has a parliamentary system it's a bit complicated in the number of seats change depending on the number of votes but we can see here the city you see as you that's the conservatives are going to take up just about two hundred and thirty nine seats the s.p.d. slightly less a left party a small chunk of sixty six states the greens sixty five the f.t.p. seventy seven and the f.d.a. ninety three seats that's how things stand right now where you've been watching special coalition coverage will be here with you throughout the evening as we get new projected results we'll share them with you. just as soon as we get them here's a recap of our headlines this hour german chancellor angela merkel looks set for a fourth term in office following parliamentary elections projections show her conservatives as the biggest party with around thirty three percent of the vote but they've suffered some heavy losses and will be forced to negotiate

a new coalition government and the right wing alternative for germany has made history by entering the bonus song projections show the party is the third largest in the new german parliament the a.f. days lead candidate alice vital says her party will seek a parliamentary investigation into what she called legal breaches made by medical was her open door policy for refugees back in two thousand and fifteen but i'm sara harman in berlin thanks for joining us for our special coverage continues at the top of the hour here that. election victory number four. on good american remains germany's chancellor. our political career began in one thousand nine hundred nine when the berlin wall fell and unforeseen winds took. from physicists to the most powerful woman in the world and give america

a portrait. in sixty minutes. this is you don't mean you come to life somebody let's go right to our correspondent news in central istanbul and we are looking for your studio more on those stories in just a minute but first this news just in it's all about perspective closer to. germany besides the german election you will have why but special coverage i can have all the numbers as they come in followed by in-depth analysis who will do when is be true the. loses and why is it so in poll passion and germany designs the german election today at fifteen hundred u.t.c. right here on d.-day we. meet the germans new and surprising aspects of life and culture in germany. us

american keep newsa takes a look at germany it is increasing these at their traditions every day lives and language how can this come out of. young groups. like the french mci l d w dot com beat the germans. on the american who gets a fourth term as chancellor but she is a wounded leader and she'll have to contend with the far right party in the new parliament right here in berlin now this all makes germany something that it hasn't been in more than a generation on predictable tonight the world's first reactions a wish list and the real.