默克尔第三次当选德国总理
Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party has won Germany's election, but finished just short of an absolute majority, official results show.
德国总理安吉拉·默克尔领导的保守党赢得此次大选，但是与绝对性的胜利尚有差距。
Angela Merkel told supporters they had achieved "something fantastic"
Mrs Merkel urged her party to celebrate "a super result" as she looked set for a historic third term.
Her conservative bloc took about 41.5% of the vote - but her liberal partners failed to make it into parliament.
It is thought she is likely to seek a grand coalition with the Social Democrats (SPD) who won 26%.
The results showed that the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) won only 4.8%, which correspondents say is a disaster for the junior coalition partner, leaving it with no national representation in parliament for the first time in Germany's post-war history.
Party chairman Philipp Roesler called it "the bitterest, saddest hour of the Free Democratic Party".
The FDP was beaten by the Green Party (8.4%) and the former communist Left Party (8.6%). It almost finished behind the new Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD), which advocates withdrawal from the euro currency and took 4.7%, just short of the parliamentary threshold.
There was at one point speculation that Mrs Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister CSU might even win enough seats for an absolute majority - the first in half a century.