Poll setback puts Merkel coalition on back foot

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives were yesterday licking their wounds after strong setbacks in state polls raised doubts about their favoured coalition’s chances of winning a looming general election.

Merkel still seems assured of a second term after the September 27 election, with a double-digit lead in the polls over the rival Social Democrats (SPD), junior partners in her unwieldy “grand coalition”.

But her hopes to ditch the SPD after the general election in favour of the pro-business Free Democrats appeared to narrow after the disappointing results of three state elections held on Sunday.

The CDU posted losses in all three polls compared to their score five years ago, and lost power in two of them, according to preliminary results.

Although the SPD failed to make major gains, a jubilant foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Merkel’s SPD challenger, saw her poor showing as a sign the centre-left still had a shot of snatching the chancellery from her.

As pollsters expected, the chancellor’s CDU held onto power in the eastern state of Saxony but will need to link up with the Free Democrats to form a ruling majority.

And it appeared to lose the state houses of neighbouring Thuringia and Saarland on the French border outright.

However, smaller parties profited from the conservatives’ losses far more than the SPD, which posted slight gains in Thuringia and Saxony and a steep drop in support in Saarland.

But in Thuringia and Saarland, the SPD will likely be able to form ruling coalitions with the Greens and the far-left Die Linke, a relatively new party made up of disgruntled Social Democrats and former East German communists.