Friedrich Merz and his party won, Elon Musk didn’t seem to move voters, and more lessons from an early German vote with big implications for Europe.

Conservative leader Friedrich Merz won a lackluster victory, while Chancellor Olaf Scholz conceded his center-left Social Democrat party’s worst postwar defeat.

Trump hailed the result as a "GREAT DAY FOR GERMANY," while the far-right AfD party that Elon Musk has championed made historic gains.

The racist, far-right, pro-Russia AfD— founded in 2013 as an anti-European Union party—is an outlier even among Europe’s nationalist parties. One senior leader has been twice convicted of using banned Nazi slogans; the party has also been under observation by the German domestic intelligence agency for suspected extremism.

Sunday’s election comes as Germany and the rest of Europe grapple with the new Trump administration, the Russia-Ukraine war and security across the continent. Polls across Germany will close at 6 p.m.

Germans are going to the polls after an intense election campaign dominated by their country's faltering economy and a succession of deadly attacks that have made migration and security a focal issue.