Merkel’s party wins regional election

BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party easily won an election in Germany’s western Saarland state on Sunday, an unexpectedly strong performance as Merkel prepares to seek a fourth term in a national vote later this year.

The outcome was disappointing for her center-left rivals, the Social Democrats, who faced their first electoral test since nominating Martin Schulz in January as Merkel’s rival for the chancellery.

The party, which saw a boost in poll ratings with Schulz’s nomination, actually lost ground from Saarland’s 2012 election, falling from 30.6 percent of the vote to 29.6 percent, preliminary official figures showed. Merkel’s party won 40.7 percent of the vote in the region of nearly 1 million people on the French border, up from 35.2 percent in 2012.

“In uncertain times, people trust the political force that governs reliably,” Peter Tauber, the general secretary of Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, said. “The [Christian Democratic Union] is the only political force that distanced itself clearly from working with the populists of left and right.”

Conservative governor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer is one of only five conservative governors in Germany’s 16 states. Saarland is currently run by a “grand coalition” of the two big parties, similar to Merkel’s governing alliance in Berlin.

The nationalist Alternative for Germany was seen entering the state legislature with 6.2 percent of the vote.

AP/OLIVER DIETZE Supporters of the conservative Christian Democratic party react in Saarbruecken, Germany, when the first exit polls were published after the election in the southwestern German state of Saarland.