The center-left Social Democratic Party looks to have got 25.9% of the vote, while Angela Merkel's right-leaning bloc received 24.1%.
With no one party gaining a majority of seats in the Bundestag, Germany's parliament, a coalition government is inevitable, but which party will lead a coalition government — and who will be Germany's next chancellor — is up in the air.
The main contenders for chancellor — the SPD's Olaf Scholz and CDU-CSU's Armin Laschet — will now have to engage in negotiations with other parties in an attempt to form a coalition. For his part, the SPD's Scholz told his party that it needed to wait for the final result and then "get to work."Coalition building is not expected to be an easy process with compromises and concessions expected to be extracted from the main parties by smaller rivals, such as the Green Party and the FDP.