This Article is From Aug 31, 2009

Merkel's party loses ground in German votes

Berlin:

Voters inflicted losses on Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives in state elections, a setback weeks before a national election that she hopes will produce a new center-right government.

Merkel's center-left rival in the Sept. 27 national ballot, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, celebrated yesterday her party's ``dramatic losses'' and said the results show the election remains open. But his own Social Democrats, who trail in national polls, performed weakly.

Steinmeier also faces awkward questions about whether his party enters regional alliances with the opposition Left Party, with which he has pledged to form no national government.

Voters chose new state legislatures in Saarland, on the French border; and in Thuringia and Saxony, in the formerly communist east.

All three currently have governors from Merkel's Christian Democrats, which remained the strongest party.

However, results showed it slumping to 34.5 per cent of the vote in Saarland from 47.5 per cent five years ago; and from 43 per cent to 31.2 per cent in Thuringia.

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