The Christian Democrats won with 28.6% of the vote while the far-right Alternative for Germany came second with 20.8%.

Germany's mainstream conservatives led by Friedrich Merz won Germany’s national election, ensuring that Ukraine has an even stronger supporter in the European Union's largest country and creating hopes for renewal in an economic powerhouse that has been badly battered in recent years.

The leading candidate, Friedrich Merz, a conservative who has adopted many of the AfD’s hard-line positions on immigration, used his closing statement of the debate to promise his voters that he would never allow the AfD into his government. Under him, he said, the firewall would hold.