Post date: Jan 20, 2013 1:9:44 PM
Voting starts in German state elections in Hanover seen as a barometer for September's federal elections.
HANOVER, GERMANY (JANUARY 20, 2013) (REUTERS) - Polls opened on Sunday (January 20) in Germany's Lower Saxony state elections, a contest that could end a long losing streak for Chancellor Angela Merkel'sChristian Democrats and set the tone for September's federal election.
Polling stations in Hanover opened at 8 a.m. on Sunday (0700GMT) in what is expected to be a close battle between Merkel's centre-right coalition and the centre-left Social Democrat-Greens opposition.Led by state premier David McAllister, the CDU and their Free Democrat (FDP) allies have drawn even in opinion polls with their opponents, each on 46 percent, even though the centre-right trailed by 13 points in voter surveys through mid-2012.
Merkel, the most popular politician in Germany thanks to her handling of the euro zone debt crisis, hopes a victory for the centre-right in Lower Saxony, an industrial and farming heartland, would give her re-election campaign a boost ahead of the September federal vote.
The comeback in Lower Saxony has turned Germany's fourth-most populous state -- a genuine swing state -- into a ferocious battleground with Merkel appearing seven times to campaign with McAllister, the West Berlin-raised son of a British soldier.
The SPD and the Greens, who had long been comfortably ahead of the centre-right incumbents in polls, have watched in horror as their lead evaporated. Local SPD leaderStephan Weil has been hurt by gaffe-prone SPD chancellor candidate Peer Steinbrueck.
The CDU have suffered setbacks in the last 12 state elections and since Merkel's re-election in 2009 lost power entirely to the SPD and Greens in four important states:Hamburg; Baden-Wuerttenberg, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein.
But even if the CDU wins the most votes, their centre-right coalition could be defeated if the FDP does not clear the 5 percent threshold.
That is a similar problem to the one Merkel faces at the national level, where the CDU is well ahead of the SPD but doubts remain about whether the FDP will rise from the 4 percent they are getting in polls now.
First projections are expected once polls close at 6 p.m. and preliminary results are due within an hour.