Friedrich Merz has been elected as Germany’s new chancellor following a second round of voting in the Bundestag on Tuesday afternoon. Earlier in the day, Merz failed to secure a majority in
the first ballot.
In the decisive second vote, the CDU/CSU leader received 325 out of 360 votes. The initial round saw a much closer result, with 310 in favor and 307 against.
This marks the first time in Germany’s post-war history that a chancellor has not been elected in a single round of voting. The unusual delay is seen as a setback and rocky beginning for the new coalition government formed by Merz's conservative CDU/CSU bloc and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD). Photo by Michael Lucan, Wikimedia commons.