Merkel's bloc stumbles badly in Germany; horse-trading ahead

Germany's centre-left Social Democrats and outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel 's centre-right bloc both laid claim Sunday to lead the country's next government as projections showed the long-time leader's party heading for its worst-ever result in a national election.

The outcome appeared to put Europe's biggest economy on course for lengthy haggling to form a new government, while Merkel stays on in a caretaker role until a successor is sworn in. A three-party governing coalition, with two opposition parties that have traditionally been in rival ideological camps -- the environmentalist Greens and the business-friendly Free Democrats -- would provide the likeliest route to power for both leading candidates.

Only one of the three candidates to succeed Merkel, who chose not to run for a fifth term, looked happy after Sunday's vote: the Social Democrats' Olaf Scholz, the outgoing vice chancellor and finance minister who pulled his party out of a years-long slump.

Scholz said the predicted results were "a very clear mandate to ensure now that we put together a good, pragmatic government for Germany."

The Greens made their first bid for the chancellery with co-leader Annalena Baerbock, who fell well short of overtaking Germany's two traditional big parties after a gaffe-strewn campaign. Armin Laschet, the governor of North Rhine-Westphalia state who outmaneuvered a more popular rival to secure the nomination of Merkel's Union bloc, struggled to motivate the party's base and made missteps of his own.