President Joe Biden said "I will be darned" on Sunday, after a reporter told him the Social Democratic Party was ahead in Germany's historic federal election. .
"They're solid," Biden said of the results when told the SPD was expected to beat Angela Merkel's conservative alliance, according to Reuters. .
Early results Monday gave the center-left SPD the largest share of the vote with 25.9%, according to the country's Federal Returning Officer, with Merkel's right-leaning bloc of the Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union getting 24.1% of the vote.
She also said that, going forward, the big question is whether the transatlantic alliance "can now align on a major strategy that is about Western liberal democracy, where the EU is not just forced to adopt American standards but can actually have this role of being a true partner — which means we need to invest more in ourselves, in defense, in technological development and so on."