Friedrich Merz succeeded Tuesday in his bid to become the next German chancellor during a second vote in parliament, hours after he suffered a historic defeat in the first round.
The conservative leader had been expected to win the vote to become Germany’s 10th chancellor since World War II. No candidate for chancellor in postwar Germany had failed to win on the first ballot.
Merz received 325 votes in the second ballot.
Merz needed a majority of 316 out of 630 votes in the first round of voting, but only got 310. Because it was a secret ballot, it was not immediately clear who had defected from Merz’s camp and might never be known.
Merz’s coalition is led by his center-right Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democrats join them.
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Upon announcing the next vote, the head of the Union bloc in parliament, Jens Spahn, said, “The whole of Europe, perhaps even the whole world, is watching this second round of elections.”
Germany, the most populous member state of the 27-nation European Union, has the continent’s biggest economy and is a diplomatic heavyweight. The new chancellor’s in-tray would include the war in Ukraine, the Trump administration’s confrontational trade policy, and domestic issues such as the rise of a far-right, anti-immigrant party.
