Angela Merkel swept to a second mandate in Germany's election on Sunday as the head of a new centre-right alliance. Exit polls suggested the 55-year-old Merkel's conservative Christian Union bloc (CDU/CSU) as the clear winners with about 33 per cent of the vote. Her favoured partners, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), captured around 15 percent. Under Germany's complex electoral arithmetic, their combined score of about 48 per cent will likely be enough to put them over the top. The majority will mean that Merkel, Germany's first female leader and the only chancellor from the ex-communist east, can serve another four-year term. The Social Democrats (SPD), junior partners in Merkel's loveless "grand coalition", plummeted to between 22 and 23 percent their worst score since World War II and will be banished to the opposition after 11 years in government.