German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives won in the elections with the best result in over two decades but narrowly missed an absolute majority, preliminary official results showed.
Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its Bavarian sister party together won 41.5 per cent of the vote against 25.7 per cent for the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and 8.4 per cent for the ecologist Greens.
The CDU's junior coalition allies the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) for the first time in over half a century missed out on any seats in parliament, garnering only 4.8 per cent.
