Lars Klingbeil, believes conservative Friedrich Merz will garner enough support from lawmakers to become chancellor in a second round of voting, after falling short by just six votes hours earlier. Klingbeil said Merz's conservative bloc and the SPD - which agreed to form Germany's next coalition government - as well as the opposition Greens and The Left party had agreed to request a second round of voting to take place in the afternoon.

Germany may attempt again today, May 6, to elect Friedrich Merz as federal chancellor. In the previous vote, he was just six votes short, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports. According to the news agency,

Friedrich Merz has become Germany's new chancellor after winning a second vote in the country's parliament. He unexpectedly failed in the first parliamentary ballot on Tuesday morning - the first time a chancellor has failed to be elected at the first attempt since the Second World War.