Troubled German Social Democrats elect combative new leader

Germany's center-left Social Democrats have elected a combative new leader to spearhead their recovery from a disastrous election result while guiding them through a fractious coalition government with Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives.

Andrea Nahles, the head of the party's parliamentary group, won two-thirds of delegates' votes at a congress in Wiesbaden on Sunday. She defeated Simone Lange, the left-leaning mayor of the northern town of Flensburg, to become the party's first female leader.

The Social Democrats slumped to their worst result since World War II in September's election, securing only 20.5 percent of the vote. The party initially planned to go into opposition, but reluctantly changed course after Merkel's negotiations with two smaller parties collapsed and eventually agreed to enter another "grand coalition" as the chancellor's junior partner.