Exit Polls Predict Merkel Defeat in Federal State Election

Aftermath of the general strike and rebellion in Greece on May 5, 2010. Three people died in the conflicts which have swept the country in response to the capitalist economic crisis and the pro-banker bailout.
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Exit polls predict Merkel defeat in federal state election

By Quentin Peel in Berlin
Financial Times
May 9 2010 17:45

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was facing a bruising defeat on Sunday in a critical federal state election, as the polls closed in a fiercely fought race in North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state in Germany.

Exit polls predicted a victory for the “red-green” alliance of Social Democrats and Greens over Ms Merkel’s “black-yellow” coalition of Christian Democrats and Free Democrats. The result, if confirmed, would give the red-green combination just enough seats to form a stable government, according to the poll on the ZDF television channel.

The clearest signal was a sharp drop in the vote for the chancellor’s own party, down from 44 per cent to 34 per cent of the poll since the last election in 2005, according to the ZDF poll.

The vote for both of the major parties – CDU and SPD – was down, suggesting that the SPD failed to benefit from the vote against their main rivals.

The clearest winners of the night were the environmentalist Greens, with a vote predicted at 12.5 per cent, and the radical left Linke party, looking set to enter the state parliament with 5.5 per cent. The liberal FDP, Ms Merkel’s allies in the federal government, failed to improve their score above 6.5 per cent.

The good performance of the Greens was the decisive factor in giving “red-green” a clear lead, but the success of the Linke could deny the two parties a majority. Ms Merkel and her coalition allies have been warning repeatedly that the result could produce a “red-red-green” coalition, bringing the Linke into the government of a big federal state in western Germany for the first time.

The poll is seen as a mini-general election in Germany, and the first chance for voters to pass judgment since Ms Merkel won a clear victory for her coalition in Berlin last September.

Public controversy over Germany’s participation in a massive €22.4bn loan to Greece – approved by the government only days before the poll – seems to have hit support for the “black-yellow” alliance, which currently forms the government in Düsseldorf, the NRW state capital, as well as Berlin. Otherwise the campaign was dominated by local issues such as education.

If Ms Merkel’s coalition loses, it will also lose its majority in the Bundesrat, the upper house of parliament in Berlin, making legislation more complex to negotiate with opposition as well as government supporters.

In effect, it would mean the federal government having to abandon plans for any significant tax cuts in this parliamentary term, as well as giving up on any hopes to extend the working life of its nuclear power stations beyond 2020. Health reform would also become a matter of cross-party negotiation.

If the CDU does as badly as the exit polls suggest, it could fuel inner party criticism of the chancellor from conservatives, who believe she has taken the party too far into the centre ground of German politics.

However many political analysts believe that Ms Merkel may actually prefer to govern with an effective “grand coalition” in Berlin, being forced to negotiate with the SPD and Greens as well as her own coalition partners. She has struggled to forge an easy partnership with the FDP, which has left the coalition looking disunited.

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