The center-left Social
Democrats won the most votes in the Hamburg state
election Sunday, according to exit polls, followed by the environmentalist Green party in a vote that was overshadowed by a racist massacre and political turmoil in Germany.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats appeared to lose badly, receiving the weakest results in Hamburg, which is Germany's second-biggest city and its own state, in the last seven decades.
In what would be a large upset, the far-right Alternative for
Germany — which has been especially successful in state
elections in eastern Germany where it got up to about a quarter of the vote — appears to not have received the 5% of the vote needed to get into the state assembly.