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By Paul Carrel
BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives and allies of the Social Democratic coalition (SPD) meeting in Berlin have both lost support in the regional elections held in Hesse on Sunday. in the west of the country.
The conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) of Merkel came home first, but won only 28% of the vote, revealed a poll at the exit of broadcaster ARD. This represented a significant drop from the 38.3% that the CDU had won in the last elections in Hesse in 2013.
The SPD gained 20%, against 30.7% in 2013, and ecologically the Greens, with 19.5%, in third place. The results suggest that the CDU and the Greens could continue to form their ruling coalition in Hesse, but risk increasing tensions within Merkel's "grand coalition" in Berlin.
The fourth and possibly last Merkel government has nearly collapsed twice, and the SPD's poor performance in Hesse will almost certainly revive a debate within the party about whether it should pull out of Coalition.
An increasing number of SPD members have the feeling that their center-left party is tarnished by its alliance with Merkel and that it would be better to rebuild in the opposition – a scenario to which the SPD leader has resisted.
Merkel's conservatives formed their loveless national partnership with the SPD in March only after the failure of negotiations on a three-way coalition of conservatives, Greens and the pro-business FDP.
(Report by Paul Carrel, edited by Matthew Mpoke Bigg)
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