Berlin: Germany's left-leaning Social Democratic Party (SPD) has won the most seats in the country's federal election, preliminary results show, but it will be some time before the makeup of the new government is known, according to the provisional election results released by the Federal Returning Officer early Monday morning.

The SPD's share of the votes surged by 5.2 percentage points from four years ago, while its main rival the conservative union of Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party Christian Social Union (CSU) suffered heavy losses.

The provisional results showed the CDU/CSU union took only 24.1 percent of the vote in this year's parliamentary election, 8.9 percentage points lower as compared with that of last election. It marks the end of the dominant role of the conservatives ever led by incumbent Chancellor Angela Merkel for over a decade in the country's Bundestag, or the lower house of Parliament.

Olaf Scholz, SPD's chancellor candidate who is also incumbent vice-chancellor and finance minister, received long-time applause from his party members in SPD's headquarters in Berlin after the preliminary exit poll had projected the leading position of his party. "I'm happy to see so many here and of course I'm happy about the election result ... Many citizens want that the next Chan cellor is Olaf Scholz," he said.

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