BERLIN – German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder‘s Social Democrats and their Greens coalition partners won a narrow parliamentary majority in an election on Sunday, according to preliminary official results released on Monday. The head of the federal election office said the SPD had won 38.5 percent of the vote to take 251 of the 603 seats in the next parliament while the Greens won 8.6 percent to claim 55 seats. The ruling coalition won a combined total of 306 seats.

The conservative opposition Christian Democrats and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union, won 38.5 percent and will have 248 seats. The liberal Free Democrats won 7.4 percent to take 47 seats.

The reform communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) won four percent, falling short of the five-percent threshold required for representation as a parliamentary group. But the PDS won two of the 299 constituencies outright and will take two seats in parliament. The preliminary data followed earlier television network projections that showed the SPD-Greens coalition returning to power by a slim majority. Final election figures will be released in about two weeks. The turnout was 79.1 percent. Reuters