Merkel's conservatives on track for absolute majority: projection

BERLIN (Reuters) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives are on course to win a historic absolute majority in Sunday's election, according to a projection based on exit polls and some results from broadcaster ARD. The projection put Merkel's conservatives on 42.5 percent, a whisker over the combined total for the left parties who together scored 41.6 percent. The last time a German party won an absolute majority was in 1957 with conservative leader Konrad Adenauer. The projection showed Merkel's Free Democrat (FDP) allies and the anti-euro Alternative for Germany (AfD) just failing to clear the 5 percent threshold needed to enter the Bundestag lower house. (Reporting by Noah Barkin, Stephen Brown and Madeline Chambers, editing by Gareth Jones)