German Chancellor and leader of the Christian Democratic Union ( CDU), Angela Merkel, gestures during a news conference after a CDU party board meeting in Berlin yesterday. Photo: Reuters

Germany’s Angela Merkel began trying to persuade her centre-left rivals to keep her in power yesterday, after her conservatives notched up their best election result in more than two decades but fell short of an absolute majority.

Even the Chancellor’s political foes acknowledged she was the big winner of the first German vote since the start of the euro crisis in 2010 thrust the pastor’s daughter from East Germany into the role of Europe’s dominant leader.

But despite leading her conservatives to their best result since 1990, with 41.5 per cent of votes putting them five seats short of the first absolute majority in Parliament in over half a century, the 59-year-old Merkel had little time to celebrate.

“We are, of course, open for talks and I have already had initial contact with the SPD (Social Democratic Party) chairman, who said the SPD must first hold a meeting of its leaders on Friday,” Merkel told a news conference, adding that she did not rule out talks with other potential coalition partners. The 150-year-old SPD may have finished a poor second with their second-worst post-war result, but they know Merkel has to come knocking after her current centre-right coalition partners, the Free Democrats (FDP), failed to get back into Parliament.

One SPD leader, speaking on condition of anonymity, half-joked that it would have been better if Merkel had got her own slim majority: “That would have been the worst punishment for her – to bear responsibility for everything on her own.”

She has been thrusted into the role of Europe’s dominant leader

But in German politics, where only one post-war chancellor has won an absolute majority – conservative patriarch Konrad Adenauer, in 1957 – complex coalition-building is par for the course and few politicians build consensus better than Merkel. Her calm leadership through the euro crisis has reinforced her status as “Mutti” (mother) of the nation, but she counted on the SPD and Greens’ support on all the euro zone bailout votes.

Polls show a majority of German voters would like another ‘grand coalition’, as do many of Germany’s partners in the euro currency area, who expect the SPD to soften Merkel’s austerity-focused approach to struggling euro zone states like Greece.