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Center-Left Defeats Merkel’s Party in State Vote Merkel’s Strong Standing Takes a Hit in Local German Elections
(about 13 hours later)
BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s main rivals pulled off an upset in a regional election, eking out a one-seat majority that will usher the opposition Social Democrats into power in the state of Lower Saxony, months ahead of balloting for the national Parliament. BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel is without question the most powerful politician in Europe, trusted by German voters with their money and their future, but that still may not be enough to secure her a third term in elections this year.
Preliminary results released on Monday showed the center-left bloc of the Social Democrats and the Greens securing a one-seat majority in the regional legislature in Hanover. A down-to-the-wire state election over the weekend has shaken up German politics, handing the upper house of Parliament squarely to the opposition and jeopardizing Ms. Merkel’s re-election chances in September.
The shift signaled an end to a decade of center-right government in the state and will have a direct impact at the national level by tipping the balance of power in the upper house of Parliament, the Bundesrat. Speaking to reporters after meeting with her Christian Democratic party leaders, the chancellor did not try to play down the outcome of Sunday’s vote in the state of Lower Saxony. “I don’t want to beat around the bush, after such an emotional roller coaster a loss hurts all the more,” said Ms. Merkel, standing beside her party’s lead candidate from the state, a visibly shellshocked David McAllister, who had led the polls for months.
The victory in Lower Saxony gives the center-left a majority in the Bundesrat that could allow it to block legislation from the lower house, dominated by Ms. Merkel’s center-right bloc. The rival Social Democrats and Greens were poised to take power in the state after eking out a one-seat majority in the state Parliament, ending a decade of conservative control. Once again it was the relative weakness of Ms. Merkel’s coalition partners, the Free Democrats, that decided the election.
“I expect that it will hardly be possible to push through proposals that the S.P.D. opposes,” Volker Kauder, the parliamentary leader for Ms. Merkel’s party told ZDF public television on Monday. “We will have to see if they use it.” The Social Democrats took 32.6 percent of ballots, while the Greens won 13.7 percent, official preliminary results showed Monday, giving them 69 seats in the state legislature. Although the Christian Democrats emerged as the strongest party, with 36 percent of the vote, combined with their Free Democrat partners they were able to secure only 68 seats.
The Social Democrats took 32.6 percent of the vote, while the Greens won 13.7 percent, the preliminary results showed, giving them 69 seats in the regional legislature. Although the Christian Democrats emerged as the strongest party with 36 percent of the vote, combined with their Free Democrat partners, they were able to secure only 68 seats. The Christian Democrats were so concerned about the smaller party’s chances that their leaders implored their own voters to split their votes with the struggling party. In German elections each voter receives two ballots, one to vote for an individual candidate and the other for a party.
The Free Democrats, the junior partner in Ms. Merkel’s governing coalition in Berlin, won 9.9 percent of the vote. The tactic nearly worked. The Free Democrats, polling right around the 5 percent threshold for representation in the state Parliament, won 9.9 percent of the vote. Analysis showed that more than 100,000 voters from the Christian Democrats shared their votes with the Free Democrats.
Neither the Pirate Party nor the Left Party cleared the 5 percent hurdle need to secure representation in the Lower Saxony legislature. Ms. Merkel can only hope that the Free Democrats put their house in order before parliamentary elections in eight months. Indeed, analysts interpreted the results as a worrying omen for Ms. Merkel as she squares off against her main challenger for chancellor, Peer Steinbrück, the leader of the Social Democrats. Though he kicked off his campaign with a series of gaffes and trails far behind Ms. Merkel, voters will not actually be choosing one over the other.
It was unclear how much the loss will hurt Ms. Merkel, who enjoys overwhelming popularity in Germany, thanks to a relatively robust economy, low unemployment and her hard-nosed handling of Europe’s debt crisis. Germany does not have a two-party, winner-take-all system; parliamentary politics come down to party success and their alliances. The chances of Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats winning an outright majority in September’s elections are extremely low, polls show.
Ms. Merkel made seven appearances in Lower Saxony this month, alongside the state’s governor, David McAllister. That means that Ms. Merkel needs the Free Democrats to pull out of their tailspin. Otherwise she could see a national repeat of the results in Lower Saxony, where her party wins the largest share of the vote but watches the Social Democrats and the Greens team up to take power.
Although he was the incumbent, the campaign was the first for Mr. McAllister, 42, who took over the position in 2010 when his predecessor, Christian Wulff, was called to Berlin to become president. The son of a soldier from Scotland and a German mother, Mr. McAllister insisted throughout the campaign that his tenure had brought prosperity to the region, and he urged voters to support continuity. Avoiding such an outcome will not be easy. Ms. Merkel is renowned for her tactical maneuvering but often criticized for succeeding at the expense of her associates and subordinates. Opinion surveys consistently show that she is more popular than ever, with voters particularly approving of her tough stance in the euro crisis on bailouts for deeply indebted nations like Greece. But analysts have questioned whether the Christian Democrats have therefore become too much of a one-woman party — and perhaps have jeopardized the junior partners in the governing coalition by overshadowing them.
He was expected in Berlin for talks at the Christian Democratic headquarters later Monday. Philipp Rösler, the head of the pro-business Free Democrats and Ms. Merkel’s vice chancellor, responded Monday to the Lower Saxony defeat by offering to step down as party chairman. The leadership decided that he would remain but not lead the party in the parliamentary elections, making Mr. Rösler in effect a lame duck.
His main challenger, the mayor of Hanover, Stephan Weil, who ran for the Social Democrats, struggled to make himself better known among voters, resorting at one point in the campaign to handing out red roses to prospective voters, which stretches across largely rural countryside from the North Sea to the former inner-German border. Complicating matters further, the left-leaning coalition now enjoys an outright majority in Parliament’s upper house, the Bundesrat, where state delegations vote on legislation. The Social Democrats and Greens can now reject bills that need the upper house’s approval, forcing their return to the lower house for more debate.
“I am excited about five years of red-green,” Mr. Weil told reporters after realizing his bloc’s success, using the traditional color codes for his party and their partners. “That was a real roller-coaster ride tonight.” Although the shift of power is not expected to affect the government’s handling of the euro crisis, it could provide opportunities for the opposition to drag out other issues, resulting in an extended period of gridlock that could damage the governing coalition’s public standing.
Although local issues tend to dominate regional elections — as was the case in Lower Saxony, where the education system and completion of several infrastructure projects dominated the debate — the outcome could help the Free Democrats improve their image at the national level of a party dogged by a leadership crisis. Ms. Merkel made it clear that the Free Democrats remain her preferred partner, but that she would not rule out a return to her coalition from 2005 to 2009, in which her Christian Democrats governed with the Social Democrats.
Many had blamed the party’s chairman, Philipp Rösler, who also serves as economy minister and consistently ranks among the country’s least popular politicians, for failing to focus on concrete issues. “It will be a national election in which every party fights for its own votes,” Ms. Merkel said.
The result in Lower Saxony continued a trend of losing state elections for the Christian Democrats in important states where they once held clear majorities.
Last May, the Christian Democrats failed to take control of Germany’s most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia, where the Social Democrats and Greens consolidated control, and they lost Schleswig-Holstein.
A year earlier, they had been forced to step down after 58 years at the helm in Baden-Württemberg.
Although the Christian Democrats fared much better in Lower Saxony than in those states, as Jürgen Falter, a professor of political science at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, pointed out, it set a dangerous precedent for what could happen in September.
“The result showed that the conservative camp can rack up a considerable result, but that may still not be enough to build a coalition,” he said.