BERLIN, May 13: Voters in Germany’s most populous state strengthened a centre-left regional government which Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives had portrayed as irresponsibly spendthrift, and inflicted an embarrassingly heavy defeat Sunday on the German leader’s party, projections showed.The centre-left Social Democrats and Greens — Germany’s main opposition parties — won combined support of about 51 per cent in the election in North Rhine-Westphalia state, according to ARD television projections based on exit polls and early counting.
That would be enough to give them a majority in the state legislature, which they narrowly missed in the last regional election two years ago. Meanwhile, support for Merkel’s Christian Democrats was seen dropping to 26 per cent from more than 34 per cent, their worst showing in the state since World War II.
The outcome boosted Germany’s centre-left opposition, and gave food for thought to Merkel’s conservatives, as the country looks toward national elections due late next year and the chancellor grapples with Europe’s stubbornly persistent debt crisis.
The pro-market Free Democrats, Merkel’s struggling partners in the national government, performed respectably, polling more than 8 per cent to buck speculation that they might fail to win seats — a result that may help stabilize the party.
The state government of popular Social Democratic governor Hannelore Kraft had been favoured to win, particularly after a much-criticized and gaffe-prone campaign by conservative challenger Norbert Roettgen, Merkel’s federal environment minister.
’’This is a crashing defeat for Mrs. Merkel and her minister,” said Andrea Nahles, the general secretary of the Social Democrats, whose share of the vote climbed to nearly 39 per cent from 34.5 per cent. The success, she said, gave her party “tail wind.’’
’’The defeat is bitter, it is clear and it really hurts,” a crestfallen Roettgen said minutes after polls closed, announcing that he would give up the leadership of the Christian Democrats’ local branch.
’’This is, above all, my personal defeat,” he said.
About 13.2 million people were eligible to vote in the western state, a traditional centre-left stronghold which includes Cologne, Dusseldorf and the industrial Ruhr region.
North Rhine-Westphalia voted three years ahead of schedule after Kraft’s incumbent minority government narrowly failed to get a budget passed in March.
Merkel said then that it offered an opportunity for the region to elect a government that wouldn’t take on “ever more debt.’’
While national polls show Germans support Merkel’s pro-austerity stance in Europe, prominent Christian Democrat Peter Hintze said Sunday that voters in North Rhine-Westphalia viewed regional budget deficits as an “abstract theme.’’
During the campaign, Roettgen faced criticism for not committing himself to stay in state-level politics and for saying, in anapparent attempt at irony which backfired, that “regrettably” voters rather than his party would decide whether he becamegovernor.
Roettgen irritated his party by declaring that Sunday’s election would decide “whether Angela Merkel’s course in Europe is strengthened or whether it is weakened by the re-election of a pro-debt government in Germany.” Merkel said it was an important state election, “no more and no less.’’
The Free Democrats, who have taken much of the blame nationally for frequent infighting in Merkel’s national government, can build on a surprisingly strong performance last weekend in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein after a string of miserable results over the past year.
The party, which also picked debt as an election issue, appeared to have done better than the conservatives at mobilizing its voters. Their national leader, Vice Chancellor Philipp Roesler, declared: “we can say today that people are listening to us again and they trust us.’’
Projections showed the upstart Pirate Party, which has surged in recent months with a platform of near-total transparency and Internet freedom but lacks policies on many issues — including the debt crisis — entering its fourth state legislature with support of 7.5 per cent or more.
Voters gave the hard-left Left Party, which thrived as a voice of protest over recent years, less than 3 per cent, ejecting them from the local Parliament.
Sunday’s election came a week after Schleswig-Holstein voted out a regional centre-right coalition made up of the same partiesas the national government, but failed to hand the main opposition parties a majority.
It also follows setbacks for Merkel’s austerity-led response to the eurozone debt crisis in French and Greek elections last weekend.
Sunday’s election — unlike North Rhine-Westphalia’s last vote in 2010 — won’t change the national balance of power.
Two years ago, Merkel’s coalition lost the state after five years in power there. That erased the national government’s majority in the upper house of Parliament, which represents Germany’s 16 states, and its position there has since weakened further.
Current national polls consistently show Merkel’s conservatives as the biggest party.
However, they forecast a parliamentary majority neither for her centre-right coalition — which has become notorious for infighting on a wide range of policy issues — nor for the Social Democrats and Greens, who ran Germany from 1998 to 2005.
That suggests that Merkel can still hope to hold on to power when the national election comes, though perhaps with a new coalition partner.—AP