Photo Gallery Conservatives Win in Saarland
Angela Merkel's conservatives won Sunday's elections in the tiny western German state of Saarland by a surprisingly large margin, gaining 35.2 percent of the vote. Here, the CDU's leading candidate Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer celebrates her victory in the state capital Saarbrücken.
Kramp-Karrenbauer dances at a post-election party. Kramp-Karrenbauer announced on Sunday evening that she would quickly begin negotiations with the SPD to form a so-called "grand" coalition government.
The election was particularly painful for Merkel's junior coalition partner, the Free Democrats, who got just over 1 percent of the vote. Here, the FDP's designated general secretary, Patrick Döring, reacts to the results at a press conference on Sunday evening in Berlin.
The real winner of Sunday's election was Germany's newest political force, the Pirate Party, which campaigns for political transparency and Internet freedom. They won 7.4 percent of the vote, despite having had to rush to cobble together a campaign after snap elections were called. Here supporters in Saarbrücken celebrate their success.
Senior Pirate Party members Andreas Augustin, Michael Neyses und Michael Hilberer posed for a photograph after the result of the election was announced. According to one survey, over 20 percent of their votes on Sunday came from people who did not vote in previous elections.
Jasmin Maurer, top candidate for the Pirates in Saarland, is seen after casting her vote. Observers attributed their success in Saarland partly to voter frustration with perceived political corruption in the state.
The SPD's lead candidate, Heiko Maas (left), the CDU's Kramp-Karrenbauer and Michael Hilberer of the Pirate Party make a television appearance after the results of the election were announced. The Pirates' success is likely to cause concern for the Greens, who are in danger of losing voters to the political upstarts.
Former political allies Heiko Maas and Oskar Lafontaine are seated beside each other during a television interview on Sunday evening. Maas, leader of the Saarland branch of the SPD, was once mentored by Lafontaine, a former Saarland governor who was the Left Party's lead candidate in Sunday's election. The national implications of the vote are limited but Merkel's CDU was clearly relieved at not having suffered a defeat ahead of much more significant state elections in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia in May.
Graphic: Preliminary official results for the Saarland state parliamentary election
