Voting commenced for Germany’s federal elections Sunday morning, with citizens exercising their once in four-year right to elect new members of parliament for the Bundestag and select the next government.

Despite a series of political upsets during the course of the 2013-17 parliament which have seen the approval and poll ratings of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union Party (CDU) plummet, Mrs Merkel is widely expected to again come first and lead for the next four years.

The anticipated status quo result comes despite a recent poll stating 64 per cent of Germans wanted to see a new Chancellor after this election.

The major upset anticipated by pollsters in the runup to today’s vote and the count Sunday evening is the worse than anticipated performance of the Social Democratic (SPD) party under arch-Eurocrat Martin Schulz, and the entry into the Bundestag for the first time of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

The anticipated performance of the populist, conservative, and frequently libertarian party has been characterised in some media outlets — including Britain’s alarmist left-wing news site the Independent, the Guardian newspaper, and Germany’s state-run Deutsche Welle as the arrival of the “far right” in German politics.

AfD first contested the German national elections in 2013 but failed to win a single member after coming sixth with two million votes. Breitbart London reported this week that their fortunes are expected to drastically improve, with YouGov predicting the party to receive 12 per cent of the national vote, giving them an estimated 85 seats.

The party stands on a number of platforms outside the mainstream of German politics, with their anti-mass migration and anti-Islamification policies pushing them to highs of 16 per cent support during the 2016 Europe Migrant Crisis season. The party has been outspoken in personally blaming Chancellor Merkel for the migrant crisis and terror attacks, saying after the December Christmas Market attack by a Tunisian ‘asylum seeker’ that the victims are “her dead”.

In early 2017 the party called for tighter borders for Germany, a ban on Islamic face coverings, and even suggested Germany could depart the Euro single currency.

Polls are to close at 1800CET, and the count will begin shortly after. Join the Breitbart London Livewire Sunday evening as the results come in.