Free Democrats contemplate worst defeat in party's 75-year history, which may see them excluded from parliament
At the headquarters of the Free Democrats in Berlin, all eyes were fixed on a big screen as the seconds counted down to the release of exit polls. Then a loud groan reverberated around the hall as the damning number of 4.7% flashed up, dashing the party's hopes of remaining in government.
Shock was mixed with deep disappointment as the gathered liberals – until Sunday junior coalition partners in Angela Merkel's government – huddled in silence and contemplated the worst result in the party's 75-year history.
The outcome of the election was shaped by the disappointing results of all of the smaller parties, but the biggest upset of the night was the FDP's apparent failure to reach the 5% threshold necessary to enter parliament.
The party, founded in 1948, has long been seen as one of the forces underpinning postwar German politics. It had been in coalition with Merkel's conservatives since 2009, and throughout the election, the chancellor had made it clear she hoped to continue in government with the FDP, which has held the balance of power in the lower house of parliament, the Bundestag, for most of the Federal Republic's history.
But voters were not convinced enough by the pro-business grouping to ensure it remained in power. Initial results showed it had seen a 10% drop in its support since 2009.
Rainer Brüderle, its chief candidate, flanked by Germany's vice-chancellor Philip Rösler, did not attempt to hide his disappointment. "This is a difficult evening … It's clearly the worst result we've ever had as the FDP … and I take responsibility as the main candidate," he said, addressing the party faithful. He added the faintly conciliatory note that the FDP "is not a spent force", and would continue as a party. By mid-evening, both Brüderle and Rösler had offered their resignations.
But there was widespread consensus last night that the FDP had only itself to blame, having turned increasingly in recent years from a party of the centre to the centre right interested primarily in liberal economics rather than social justice. Its position had already been in grave doubt after it failed by a considerable margin to enter the Bavarian assembly in last Sunday's state election. Its call for CDU voters to give their second votes to the FDP had irked the CDU leadership, who feared a repeat of the scenario in January when the CDU narrowly lost the state election in Lower Saxony based on the number of second votes that its members had "lent" the FDP.
The wildcard of the election, the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), stood at a tantalising 4.9%, leaving its members desperately hoping that it would claw the missing 0.1% needed for it to enter parliament and reshape Germany's political landscape as the first anti-euro party in the Bundestag.As the first exit polls flashed up at the party's post-election gathering at a hotel in central Berlin last night, one man in the crowd pulled a black, red and gold flag out of his trouser pocket and leapt in the air. But when he realised his party was still 0.1 percentage points away from being able to enter parliament, the flag quickly disappeared.
The seven-month-old party remains confident that its time will come. The party's founder, economist Bernd Luck, told supporters: "We have already changed this country. If it stays at 4.9% it is a still a great success. We have given the other parties a real scare." Several in the room willingly admitted they felt an affinity with Britain's Ukip. One, a disillusioned FDP voter who declined to give his name, said he had turned to the AfD because he believed Germany's seeming success was an illusion. "Germany is like a house that is about to be battered by a thunderstorm," he said. "The tiles on the facade are already dropping off – it won't be long until our feeble foundations start breaking".
Frauke Petry, an AfD spokeswoman said the secret of the party's success lay in the fact that it had addressed issues that other parties had tried to ignore. "We have to rethink the euro crisis. We have to allow weaker countries like Greece and Spain and Portugal to leave the euro and rebuild their economies and then maybe return. We don't think we should pay for debts that have been accumulated by these countries," she told the Guardian.
Over at the gathering of Die Linke – the leftwing party made up of the remnants of the former East German Communist party, West German socialists and former SPD members disgruntled with their party's move to the centre – celebrations were in full swing, despite a drop in support of around 3%, as the party enjoyed its apparent emergence as the third strongest force in German politics for the first time in its history, narrowly overtaking the Green party. Initial polls suggested it had secured just over 8% of the vote, a fraction of a percentage point more than the Greens.
Gregor Gysi, its leader, who had repeatedly stated his willingness to enter a coalition with the SPD and Greens despite those parties' refusal to work with it, told party members in Berlin he was delighted with the result. "Who would have thought in 1990 that this party would become the third strongest force in the Bundestag," he said.
The Greens, who had become a model for other environmental parties in Europe, were licking their wounds after a disappointing performance – well short of their record 10.7% result in 2009.
The party appeared to be polling at just over 8%, with one of its two main candidates, Katrin Göring-Eckhardt, admitting the party had to "rethink" its place in society. "We need to have a very honest and clear look at how we can win the centre of society over to our ecological way of thinking," she said to supporters. "It will be a difficult time for us, but together we'll manage to get out of this hole". Alongside longer-term criticism that the party has become a haven for the bourgeois and had lost its campaigning edge, analysts pointed to their poor election campaign, in which policy proposals such as tax rises and a Veggie Day to be introduced in public canteens went down badly. A scandal over its support of paedophilia in the 1980s, plus the fact that much of its pro-environmental thunder was stolen by Angela Merkel's decision to abandon nuclear power following the Fukishima disaster, meant that the party, which was founded in 1980, was left floundering and unable to set the agenda.
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