Polls open in Germany in tight race to elect new chancellor

The election will be the first since the county reunified in 1990 that Angela Merkel will not run in as a candidate, Al-Jazeera reported.

Opinion polls have narrowed in the final week but the Social Democrats (SPD) still hold a slight lead over Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), making it the first real contest in many years.

Two final surveys published on Friday put the SPD ahead of the CDU-CSU alliance by 26 points to 25 and 25 to 22, respectively.

Voting ends at 16:00 GMT with exit polls to be released after that and a more comprehensive picture of the results expected to emerge by Monday.

ZZ/PR