BERLIN, Sept. 27 (Xinhua) -- Olaf Scholz, the chancellor candidate of German center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), said here on Monday that he would seek to form a so-called "traffic-light" coalition with the Green Party and Free Democratic Party (FDP) after the SPD had won the nail-biting general election on Sunday.
The voters have decided who should form the next government by strengthening three parties in the election -- the SPD, Greens and the FDP, and "these three parties should also lead the next federal government," the incumbent vice-chancellor and finance minister spoke at the Willy-Brandt-Haus in Berlin, the headquarters of the Social Democrats.
According to the provisional election results released by the Federal Returning Officer early Monday morning, the SPD scored 25.7 percent of the votes, beating its main rival, the conservative union Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and its sister party Christian Social Union (CSU).
The SPD's share of the votes surged by 5.2 percentage points from four years ago, while the CDU/CSU union took only 24.1 percent of the votes, 8.9 percentage points lower than that of last election.
This marks the end of the dominant role of the conservatives led by incumbent Chancellor Angela Merkel for over a decade in Bundestag, or the federal parliament.
Meanwhile, the Green Party received 14.8 percent of the votes in the election, making it the third-largest political faction in parliament, followed by the business-friendly FDP with 11.5 percent.
After the election four years ago, it took over 170 days for the new federal government to be sworn in. Once again, tough negotiations for a coalition agreement are likely to happen since the provisional election results indicated a more fragmented parliament, in which parties have to scramble for alliances to cross the threshold of having 50 percent of all seats.
