Merkel’s party suffers setback in state poll

BERLIN (AFP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives lost a closely-watched state poll Sunday, weakening her hand as she embarks on complex coalition talks following a disappointing showing at last month’s general election.

Martin Schulz’s Social Democrats (SPD) took over 37 percent of votes in the western state of Lower Saxony, the home of Volkswagen, beating Merkel’s CDU at 33.4 to 34.3 percent, according to estimates released by public broadcasters ARD and ZDF.

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), fresh from winning its first seats in the Bundestag, scored six percent, giving the anti-Islam party a presence in 14 of Germany’s 16 regional parliaments.

The SPD victory will come as a relief to former European Parliament chief Schulz, who oversaw three regional election losses this year and pledged to go into the opposition after last month’s humiliating defeat at the national level.

The Lower Saxony vote took on outsized significance coming just three weeks after a September 24 general election that handed Merkel’s conservative bloc its worst result in decades, while marking a breakthrough for the far-right AfD.

Merkel still won a fourth term, but to form a government she must now forge an alliance with the left-leaning Greens and the liberal and pro-business Free Democrats (FDP), a political poker game that could drag on well into 2018.

Commentators had warned that a setback in Lower Saxony would weaken Merkel’s bargaining position as she begins the negotiations in Berlin on Wednesday.