BERLIN – Chancellor Angela Merkel was counting the cost Monday of an historic drubbing for her conservative party in Germany’s most populous state, a major setback 16 months ahead of national elections.
Voters in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) with its 18 million inhabitants, handed Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) its worst ever result in the state, just over 26 percent according to preliminary results.
With less than a year and a half to go until she seeks a third term in office, Merkel must now weigh up how to ensure a national victory for her CDU, as well as see through her eurozone crisis-fighting policy.
“Catastrophe for the CDU,” mass circulation Bild said, adding the result would “make things difficult for Chancellor Angela Merkel”, while Die Welt commented that “the ground is shaking beneath Angela Merkel”.
The snap election saw the main opposition Social Democrats (SPD) win 39 percent in NRW, home to the Ruhr industrial heartland. They now look set to again form a coalition government with the ecologist Greens.
The victory may bolster the opposition in its bid to force Merkel to soften her austerity policy and is a further blow after voters punished governments in fellow eurozone nations France and Greece that had toed the line for German-imposed budgetary belt-tightening.
It also comes two days ahead of a highly anticipated meeting in Berlin between Merkel and France’s Socialist president-elect Francois Hollande who beat her centre-right ally on Europe, Nicolas Sarkozy.
Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist from Berlin’s Free University, said Merkel had always denied the NRW vote had anything to do with support for her policy on Europe. But he said critics could argue that “she has a strong position in Europe but at home she can’t ensure her party achieves a good result in an important state legislative election”. — AFP