German governing parties punished in state election

BERLIN—Germany’s governing parties lost significant support in a state election Sunday that was marked by discontent with infighting in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s national government and prompted calls for her administration to get its act together quickly.

Projections showed Merkel’s conservatives heading for an extremely lackluster win in the vote for the central Hesse region’s state legislature. Her center-left governing partners were on course for a dismal result, running neck-and-neck with the Greens for second place.

Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union was defending its 19-year hold on Hesse, previously a stronghold of the center-left Social Democrats, the chancellor’s coalition partners in Berlin.

There was widespread pre-election speculation that a disastrous result for either or both parties could further destabilize the national government, prompting calls for the Social Democrats to walk out and possibly endangering Merkel’s own position. But government leaders appeared keen Sunday to keep the show on the road.

Andrea Nahles, the Social Democrats’ leader, said that “the state of the government is unacceptable.”

She said her party would insist on Merkel’s governing coalition agreeing on “a clear, binding timetable” for implementing projects, and that how that is implemented ahead of an already-agreed midterm review next fall will show “whether we are still in the right place in this government.”

The CDU’s general secretary, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, said the coalition needs to identify “three concrete projects for the coming months that we implement.” She didn’t specify what they might be.

Hesse’s conservative governor, Volker Bouffier, told supporters that “the message this evening to the parties in the government in Berlin is clear: people want less argument, more objectivity, more solutions.”

Projections for ARD and ZDF public television, based on exit polls and partial counting, gave the CDU 27-28 percent support and the center-left Social Democrats nearly 20 percent. When Hesse last elected its state legislature in 2013—on the same day that Merkel was triumphantly elected to a third term as chancellor— they won 38.3 and 30.7 percent, respectively.