Germany's Merkel wins new term

Chancellor's plan for rightist coalition offers U.S. hope for closer ties

Geir Moulson and Melissa Eddy / Detroit News wire services

Berlin -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel secured a decisive victory in federal elections Sunday, winning enough votes to form a new ruling coalition that should give her a freer hand to govern and provide support for closer ties with Washington.

Voters sent the nation's main left-wing party, the Social Democrats of Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, into opposition after 11 years in government. It was the party's worst parliamentary election result since World War II.

The conservative Merkel ended her four-year "grand coalition" with Steinmeier's party because of a record showing by her new coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democrats. The results of Sunday's vote give Merkel's new coalition a comfortable majority. It has 332 seats in the lower house of parliament, compared with other parties' combined 290.

"We have achieved something great," she told cheering party members in a victory speech Sunday night. "We have managed to achieve our election aim of a stable majority in Germany for a new government."

She said she would initiate talks with the Free Democrats about forming a center-right coalition.

Such a pairing would enable Merkel, 55, to tackle the contentious issue of labor-market reform in Germany, where companies complain about stringent worker protections that they say drag down business and competitiveness. With the Free Democrats in her corner, Merkel also is likely to try to halt the planned phaseout of nuclear power, another highly emotional issue in Germany, where a strong Green Party and many ordinary people oppose such plants.

Crucial for the United States, a center-right coalition probably will be steelier in its continued commitment of troops to the war in Afghanistan, an unpopular undertaking in Germany.

Although high by American standards, at more than 70 percent, voter turnout was the lowest in Germany in more than 60 years, said the polling agency Gallup Europe.