00:00Conservative leader Friedrich Merz has been elected the new German Chancellor in the second round of voting in the Bundestag.
00:10His previous failure to win support in the German parliament was the first in the country's post-war history.
00:19Merz needed a majority of 316 out of 630 votes, well short of the 328 seats held by his coalition.
00:31That coalition is led by Merz's centre-right Christian Democratic Union and its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union.
00:40They were joined by former Chancellor Olaf Scholz's centre-left Social Democrats.
00:47Because the first round was a secret ballot, it was not immediately clear and might never be known who had defected from Merz's camp.
00:57The far-right alternative for Germany has demanded Merz's step aside and called for fresh elections following his historic defeat.
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