2 September 2010 / REUTERS, BERLIN
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats are in danger of losing control of a conservative southern German state they have governed since 1953, an opinion poll published on Wednesday said.
A Forsa poll in Stern magazine showed support for Merkel’s CDU-led centre-right coalition with the Free Democrats in Baden-Wuerttemberg fell to 43 percent while the opposition Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens scored 48 percent. The next Baden-Wuertemberg election is due in March 2011. Losing control of the conservative bastion would be a severe setback for Merkel, whose centre-right coalition at the federal level has also seen support plunge since taking power in 2009. Merkel’s coalition lost control of the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, in July when the SPD took back the most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. That has forced her to make compromises with the opposition on some laws. CDU popularity has been hurt also by one of Germany’s biggest-ever building projects -- a new 4.1 billion euro ($5 billion) train station in Stuttgart -- at a time when many Germans are feeling the squeeze of budget austerity.
