Angela Merkel's party braces for defeat in major German state

Berlin: Chancellor Angela Merkel's party faced a drubbing in Germany's most populous state on Sunday as voters cast ballots in a snap election that could provide impetus to her main rivals in the countdown to 2013 national polls.

A week after voters in Greece and France clearly plumped for anti-austerity policies, the citizens of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) could also punish conservative champions of belt-tightening.

Some 13.2 million voters -- more than a fifth of Germany's electorate -- were choosing a new regional parliament in the bellwether western state which hosts a major industrial base.

Voter turnout in NRW was about 29 per cent at midday, officials said.

The region historically plays a big role in federal politics -- in 2005, a lost vote in NRW prompted then chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to call a snap federal election which saw Ms Merkel wrest power from him.

Ms Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is fighting to capture the powerhouse state from a coalition made up of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) and ecologist Greens.

Despite surveys consistently revealing strong national support among German voters for Ms Merkel's austerity drive in Europe and for her party, the CDU is trailing the SPD by six or seven points in opinion polls taken in the NRW vote.

It is the third regional vote in eight weeks and comes a week after Ms Merkel's centre-right coalition lost power in the state of Schleswig-Holstein.

The polls suggest that the SPD's popular lead candidate in NRW, state premier Hannelore Kraft, could again be headed into a coalition with the Greens and, unlike last time, enjoy a majority.

"If it turns out well for us, for Red-Green, it would be an important sign for the federal elections," Kraft told the German DPA news agency on casting her ballot.

The poll was triggered after her minority state government unexpectedly fell when the regional parliament failed to pass a draft budget after just 22 months in power.

Mr Kraft, who argues the need for public savings but has also focused on jobs, education and nursery places, is facing off against the CDU's main candidate, Norbert Roettgen, who is also Ms Merkel's environment minister.

His campaign has run into trouble; first, when he failed to commit to staying in opposition in the region if he lost Sunday's vote. He later had to backtrack after reportedly irking party allies by saying the NRW vote was a referendum on Ms Merkel's policy on Europe.
He has hit out at Mr Kraft for clocking up public debt.

Ms Merkel's allies at the federal level, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), have seen their forecasted share of the vote rise under the party's NRW contender Christian Lindner.

Last year and earlier this year the FDP humiliatingly failed to secure enough votes to get back into six state parliaments.

Ms Merkel has denied her tie-up with the FDP nationally will be influenced by the outcome of Sunday's vote.

"The election on Sunday is an important state parliament election for North Rhine-Westphalia -- no more, no less," she told the Ruhr Nachrichten newspaper this week.

But, under a headline asking "How much longer?", Die Zeit newspaper commented that the NRW vote could be a "fateful day" for Merkel. "Angela Merkel is at the peak of her power -- and knows, now it becomes quite tough," it said.

And the Bild newspaper said on Sunday: "The minute the polling stations close... the election campaign for the 2013 legislative polls will begin."

Another party to watch is the upstart Pirate party, which has now entered three state parliaments since September on a platform of more transparency in the political process and Internet freedom.