NPR

'Hard Confrontations' Ahead With Far-Right Party In German Parliament, Merkel Says

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she would work to win back voters who'd abandoned her party. Meanwhile, internal squabbles erupted among leaders of the far-right Alternative for Germany party.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel speaks in Berlin on Monday. / Alexander Hassenstein / Getty Images

Chancellor Angela Merkel may have won Germany's national election on Sunday, but her Christian Democratic Union/Christian Social Union faction only won a third of the vote, its poorest showing since 1949.

In another blow to the incumbent leader, German voters also are sending right-wing nationalists to the parliament or Bundestag for the first time in 60 years.

Exit polls suggest that decision was more of a protest vote than a German shift to the right.

But the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), which Merkel said nabbed 1 million of her voters, was jubilant about its

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