Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) suffered a sharp dip in vote share in a legislative election Sunday in the city-state of Bremen, even as it topped the poll with 33 per cent of ballots, a television vote-count projection showed, according to dpa. The centre-left SPD, currently in an awkward federal coalition with Chancellor Angela Merkel, had hoped for a confidence-booster in Germany's smallest state as it struggles to draw level with the popular chancellor's centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU). Instead, many voters moved right, with the Merkel party, the small pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) and a eurosceptic group, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), all scoring gains. The hard left Die Linke also won a boost. Despite the shock of losing 5.6 points, according to a projection by ZDF public television, the SPD was expected to hold just enough legislative seats to renew its state-level coalition with the Greens, whose share plunged nearly 8 points to 14.7 per cent of the vote. The vote in Bremen, an industrial centre and port with 655,000 inhabitants, is the second and last of two regional polls this year. A similar SPD-Green line-up won the Hamburg election in February. Merkel's CDU, which regularly scores about 40 per cent of voter sympathy in nationwide opinion polls, has never made much headway in the northern cities, but took comfort from a vote-share gain of 2 points to 22.4 per cent. The SPD and Green losses were more serious than had been forecast by pollsters. Commentators said a turnout of just 50 per cent - the lowest ever in a western German poll - may have hurt the incumbents in a state that needs to keep a tight rein on spending. Bremen has the highest per-capita debt - 30,615 euros (over 34,000 dollars) - in Germany. The state's head of government, Mayor Jens Boehrnsen, admitted he was "surprised" by the vote losses, but said, "We are not going to sulk about it." He said his government would redouble efforts to "do better" on expanding public housing and upgrading schools. The new eurosceptic AfD may have to wait until a final count is declared Wednesday to be certain if it gained representation. Electoral law denies seats to parties unless they win at least 5 per cent of votes in one of Bremen's two precincts. The AfD, which has been riven by infighting, was just above that cut-off at 5.2 per cent. A former Merkel coalition partner, the FDP, which had lost all its seats in Bremen in 2011 and in the German federal parliament in 2013 under cut-off rules, won a fresh lease of life with 6.5 per cent of votes in Bremen. The leftist party, Die Linke, won 9.9 per cent, the data showed. Boehrnsen ruled out bringing in the leftists if his coalition fell short of a majority in the state assembly when the final count was in. "It's not an option," he said in a post-vote TV interview. Boehrnsen is expected to seek an alliance with the CDU if it turns out he lacks a working majority in coalition with the Greens. The SPD, which has held the state's premiership continuously since 1945, had aimed to demonstrate that its vote-getting machinery still works in Bremen and that it may some day rise to rule Germany again. Germany's last SPD chancellor was Gerhard Schroeder, who held the post from 1998 to 2005. But nationwide SPD support runs at 25 per cent and the party's track record for the last decade has been lacklustre.
