Merkel’s CDU Defeated in Worst Postwar Result in Biggest State
By Brian Parkin - May 13, 2012 6:00 PM ET
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party was defeated in Germany’s most populous state in an election that helped the Social Democrats tighten their grip on the country’s regional governments.
The SPD, the main opposition party nationally, increased its vote share in yesterday’s ballot in North Rhine-Westphalia, enabling Prime Minister Hannelore Kraft to return to power at the head of a government with the Greens in the state capital Dusseldorf. Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union fell to its worst score since World War II.
The result is a setback for Merkel after she headlined nine campaign rallies in 27 days in North Rhine-Westphalia in a bid to regain the state, the first her CDU lost in 2010 as the debt crisis erupted and voters rebelled against bailing out Greece. The SPD is now in power in 11 of Germany’s 16 states.
“This is a massive loss in local prestige for the party,” Gerd Langguth, a Merkel biographer and professor of politics at the University of Bonn, said by phone. Even so, Merkel “will do her best to ignore the result. As long as her party is ahead in federal voting patterns she can feel insulated from regional elections.” Merkel is due to give a press conference on the result at 1 p.m. in Berlin.
North Rhine-Westphalia, with almost a quarter of Germany’s 82 million people and an economy bigger than Switzerland’s, is Merkel’s biggest electoral test this year before the federal vote in the fall 2013.
much more:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-13/merkel-s-cdu-defeated-in-biggest-german-state-exit-polls-show.html
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