The New York Times-20080128-Merkel Party-s Edge Is Tiny in Crucial State

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Merkel Party's Edge Is Tiny in Crucial State

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Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative party limped to an anemic victory in the hotly contested election in the state of Hesse on Sunday. Her Christian Democrats could yet lose control of the state, depending on the outcome of coalition negotiations, for the first time in nine years.

The strength of the challenge by the Social Democrats in Hesse and the surprising success of a small far-left party provide more evidence of a much discussed shift left by Europe's biggest economy. But the Christian Democrats stemmed any talk of outright disaster by cruising to a clear victory in the day's other election, in Lower Saxony.

The Christian Democrats had everything to lose going into the elections. The party controlled both state governments after unusually strong showings in 2003, levels it was unlikely to sustain in a normal election year.

Roland Koch, state premier in Hesse, held an absolute majority in the Parliament for the Christian Democrats. Mr. Koch will now be lucky to sneak in as the leader of a coalition government after losing just over 12 percentage points compared with his showing in 2003.

Mr. Koch set off a heated nationwide debate over violence by foreign youths, campaigning for tougher penalties for youthful offenders after a high-profile attack in late December in which two young foreigners fractured the skull of a retiree in the Munich subway system. Opponents and immigrant groups accused him of fear-mongering and populism. At times it seemed as though the entire election was about Mr. Koch.

His opponent, Andrea Ypsilanti, a Social Democrat, ran on a platform of social justice and in particular the need for a minimum wage, a message that seems to have resonated with voters. After a stinging 20-point defeat in the 2003 election, the Social Democrats made up almost the entire gap and could still end up leading a coalition government in Hesse.

The mixed results muddied the implications of these state elections for the national scene, where Mrs. Merkel leads a so-called grand coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats.

In the short term it will stabilize the grand coalition, because both parties can claim victories, said Uwe Andersen, a political scientist at Ruhr University. But in the medium term, until the next election in the Bundestag, the differences between the parties will get stronger and reforms ever harder to push through.

In a repeat of the last federal elections, neither the Christian Democrats nor the Social Democrats won enough votes in Hesse to form a government with their traditional partners, respectively, the pro-business Free Democrats and the left-wing, pro-environment Greens. One possibility is that they too may seek a grand coalition on the state level.

In Hesse, whose largest city is Frankfurt, the financial center, the Christian Democrats led the Social Democrats by a tenth of a percentage point. Despite trailing all evening in exit polls and televised projections, the conservative party claimed a slim victory with 36.8 percent of the vote compared with 36.7 percent for its rivals.

The Left Party, a combination of disillusioned Social Democrats and former Communists, won 5.1 percent of the vote in Hesse, just clearing the 5 percent hurdle for representation in the state Parliament. While the Left Party is well represented in the eastern part of the country and has parliamentary seats in the northern city-state of Bremen, it has never sat in one of the large western states' Parliaments before.

The party made an even stronger showing in Lower Saxony, where it won 7.1 percent of the vote. Dietmar Bartsch, a senior party official, called it a breakthrough.

We can make it into any state parliament now, from Schleswig-Holstein to Bavaria, he said.

Though both are left of center, the Social Democrats have thus far ruled out a coalition in Hesse that included the Left Party. Bitter feelings remain after Social Democrats, most prominently the former finance minister and Social Democratic chairman Oskar Lafontaine, broke away in 2005 to join the new group.

An association with former Communists is something many of the mainstream Social Democrats would prefer to avoid, at least in the western part of the country. An alliance would not be unprecedented, however. The city government in Berlin is a so-called red-red coalition of the Social Democrats and the Left Party.

Mrs. Merkel's party won comfortably in Lower Saxony. There, the Christian Democrats, led by Christian Wulff, defeated the Social Democrats in the home state of the automaker Volkswagen with 42.5 percent compared with 30.3 percent. That margin will allow the Christian Democrats to continue their coalition government with the Free Democrats.

Meanwhile, there will be plenty of opportunities for momentum to shift with elections coming in Hamburg at the end of February and in Bavaria in September.

[Illustration]PHOTO: Roland Koch, a Christian Democrat and Hesse State's premier, and Andrea Ypsilanti, a Social Democrat, awaiting vote results. (PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL DALDER/REUTERS)