Rise of right makes it tough for Merkel

Angela Merkel has won her fourth term as chancellor. But the rise of the far-right threatens to make it a difficult one.

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Bjrn Hcke: hardliners take the podium
(Image credit: 2016 Getty Images)

Chancellor Angela Merkel won her fourth term in the German election on Sunday, but the big winner was the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, which emerged as the country's third-largest political force with 12.6% of the vote (which translates to around 90 seats in the Bundestag). Merkel's centre-right CDU/CSU party won 33% of the vote, down from 41% in 2013, while the Social Democrats (SPD) crashed to just over 20%, their worst result since 1949.

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.