Good evening. I'm John Yang. We begin tonight with two big stories overseas. In Germany,

voters went to the polls in a national election that saw a surge in support for the far right.

From Berlin, special correspondent Malcolm Brabant has our report.

In the end, there were no surprises. The German people delivered what the opinion polls predicted.

They turned substantially right, rejecting the left-leaning coalition that has governed for the past

four years. The centre-right Christian Democrats, or CDU, secured the most votes, and their leader,

Friedrich Meerts, is in poll position to become the country's next chancellor.

But he needs the support of at least two other parties to have a majority in parliament,

the Bundestag.

We must now quickly regain our ability to act so that we can do the right thing at home,

so that we can be present in Europe again, so

that the world realizes that Germany is being governed reliably again.

The party celebrating the most is the one that came second, the anti-immigrant alternative

for Germany, or AFD, backed by the Trump administration. It polled 20% of the national vote, twice what it achieved in the last election.

Most of its support comes from the former communist East Germany,

where there's huge resentment towards the 3.5 million refugees and asylum seekers

who've entered the country since the former Chancellor, Angela Merkel,

opened the borders to people fleeing the Syrian war in 2015.

But the AFD will not be invited to join the coalition

because of its far-right routes and policies.

This means its leader, Alice Vidal,

can make life extremely uncomfortable for the incoming German administration.

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