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Merkel party poised to win German regional vote
Published in Saudi Press Agency on 18 - 01 - 2009


German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian
Democrats (CDU) won a regional election in the German state of Hesse
on Sunday, enabling it to form a coalition after 12 months of
political stalemate, according to computer projections based on early
returns, according to dpa.
The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), who govern at national
level with the CDU, saw their share of the vote plunge to an historic
low of 23.5 per cent after narrowly failing to unseat CDU Prime
Minister Roland Koch in a closely contested election a year ago.
The chancellor's conservative party was unable to profit from the
SPD's poor showing, narrowly increasing its share of the vote to 37.4
per cent from the 36.8 per cent it polled in 2008.
The CDU's preferred coalition partner, the liberal Free Democrats
(FDP), was tipped to win around 16.1 per cent, giving the two parties
a comfortable majority in the 110-member legislature in Wiesbaden.
Hesse, one of Germany's most prosperous states where the financial
centre of Frankfurt is located, has been administered for the past 10
months by a caretaker government led by Koch.
Sunday's vote came less than a week after Merkel unveiled a
50-billion-euro (67 billion dollars) economic stimulus package
designed to cushion the effects of a deepening recession.
The vote kicked off a super election year, which sees five of the
country's 16 states go to the polls, as well as elections for a new
president in May, European elections in June and a general election
on September 27.
Voter support for the Hesse SPD had steadily eroded since a
botched attempt to unseat Koch and form a minority government with
help from the Greens and radical Left Party, which has its roots
among former East German communists.
Analysts said voters punished the SPD for a decision by its leader
Andrea Ypsilanti to seek the backing of the Left Party, despite
promising in campaign speeches that she would not do so.
Ypsilanti announced her resignation as party chairman immediately
after the first results were announced.
The projections showed the Greens winning 14 per cent and the Left
Party hovering slightly above the 5 per cent hurdle they need to
clear for parliamentary representation.
Around 4.4 million people were eligible to vote in the election.


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