German Voters Deal Angela Merkel’s Coalition Another Setback

Ms. Merkel’s conservatives dropped to 27% of the vote in Hesse, while the Social Democrats, the Chancellor’s junior coalition partners in the federal government, fell to 19.8%, according to exit polls by the ZDF broadcaster. In the last election, in 2013, the parties got 38.3% and 30.7% respectively.

The vote in Hesse marks the second major setback in recent weeks for both parties, which suffered similar losses in Bavaria earlier this month.

The results are likely to lend support to rivals Ms. Merkel within her party and increase the pressure to replace her as chairwoman at a party convention in December, according to Robin Alexander, a political journalist who wrote a best-selling book about Ms. Merkel’s decision to open the country’s borders to a large influx of asylum seekers in 2015.

They could also boost the drive among the Social Democrat grbad roots to leave the coalition in a bid to stop the bleeding of votes. After exit polls were released, Andrea Nahles, the Social Democrat leader, said she would be making a series of proposals to improve the work of the government and that the success of those efforts would determine whether the party would remain in the coalition.

“Federal politics have contributed to these loses. The state of the coalition is not acceptable,” Ms. Nahles said in a news conference. She said that her party’s continued participation in the government would depend on the implementation of a new “binding roadmap” for the coalition that she would present in the coming days.

Both parties have seen their ratings plummet since the federal election in September 2017. Last week, a nationwide Emnid poll found that Ms. Merkel’s conservative bloc has shrunk to a record low of 24% support, down from 32.9%, while the Social Democrats dropped from 20.5% to 15%.

Hesse, home to about six million people, is currently ruled by a coalition between the conservatives and the Greens, who nearly doubled their 2013 result and are projected to win 19.8% of the vote. The Social Democrats aren’t part of the ruling coalition in Hesse.

The coalition in Hesse could continue with a majority of just one seat in parliament.

The anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany, known as AfD, is projected to nearly triple its 2013 showing to 13% in Hesse, according to the exit polls, and would then be represented in all of Germany’s 16 regional parliaments as well as in the federal badembly.

Hesse, an affluent region that hosts one Europe’s key financial centers, Frankfurt, boasts near full employment, with joblessness at only 4.4%, below the national average.

Yet despite its success, Hesse has become the latest state to be engulfed by the polarization of German politics that has upended the party system since the migration crisis of 2015.

“Voters here were very satisfied but we had no chance against this hurricane blowing in your face from Berlin,” said Volker Bouffier, the acting prime minister of Hesse and local CDU leader. “We need less quarrels in Berlin, or better yet none at all.”

The political turmoil has severely diminished Ms. Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats, who have ruled in a so-called Grand Coalition since 2013, while parties on the right and the left such as the AfD and the Greens continue to rise.

The political turmoil has severely diminished Ms. Merkel’s conservatives and the Social Democrats, who have ruled in a so-called Grand Coalition since 2013, while parties on the right and the left such as the AfD and the Greens continue to rise.

Ms. Merkel said last week that no more time should be “wasted” on debating the events of 2015.

But in a sign of a mounting rebellion, one of her key leadership rivals, the health care minister Jens Spahn, appeared on television on Sunday night after the polls closed in Hesse to say that the party had to find new ways to regain its strength before the December leadership election.

“We must strive to have debates, and not to try to shut them down,” Mr. Spahn said.

Write to Bojan Pancevski at [email protected]