Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party suffered an election thrashing in Germany’s second city Hamburg yesterday, with support collapsing at the start of a crunch political year.
The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) triumphed with around 50 per cent of the vote in the northern city state, compared with just 20 per cent for Ms Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), exit polls showed.
In the last election in the northern city state in 2008, the centre-right CDU’s share of the vote was 42.6 per cent, more than double Sunday’s score, while the SPD was on just 34.1 per cent.
“This is a painful day for the CDU in Hamburg,” outgoing CDU mayor Christoph Ahlhaus said. “The likely result is a bitter defeat.”
Once the SPD has formally formed a government, the result gives the opposition firm control of the federal upper house in Berlin, constricting Ms Merkel’s ability to push through legislation.
The election will return the SPD to power in a city that – apart for the last 10 years of CDU rule – has traditionally been a centre-left bastion.
“This was a historical result, not just for us, but also for others,” a triumphant SPD leader Sigmar Gabriel said in Berlin. “It shows what the Social Democrats are capable of.” Local issues however featured prominently in the Hamburg campaign and surveys show the SPD’s lead over the CDU in Hamburg is not replicated nationwide, where the conservatives remain the most popular party.
The Hamburg election is an “absolute special case”, Manfred Guellner from polling institute Forsa said before the election.
The election is the first of seven state polls in Germany this year, with the most important in southwestern Baden-Wuerttemberg on March 27, where the opposition hopes to unseat the CDU after 58 years in power.
But the SPD hopes to make it a uncomfortable year for Ms Merkel, 56, who ditched the party at the last election in September 2009 in favour of a coalition with the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP).Billed as the “dream coalition”, it has turned out to be little short of a nightmare, with internal squabbles over several major issues and Ms Merkel under fire for her handling of a series of economic crises in the eurozone.
After polling 14.6 per cent in September 2009, carrying Ms Merkel over the line, support for the FDP – led by Foreign Minister and vice-chancellor Guido Westerwelle – has collapsed to around five per cent.