MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

German opposition wins in the most populous state and finds their “SPD Angela”

Hannelore Kraft, a tram-worker's daughter with a common touch

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives suffered a crushing defeat on Sunday in an election in Germany’s most populous state, a result which could embolden the left opposition to step up attacks on her European austerity policies.

The election in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), a western German state with a bigger population than the Netherlands and an economy the size of Turkey, was held 18 months before a national vote in which Merkel will be fighting for a third term.

While she remains popular at home because of the strength of the economy and her steady handling of the Euro zone debt crisis, the sheer scale of the defeat in NRW leaves her vulnerable at a time when a backlash against her insistence on fiscal discipline is building across Europe.

According to first projections, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) won 38.9% of the vote and will have enough to form a stable majority with the Greens. Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) saw their support plunge to just 26.3%, down from nearly 35% in 2010, and the worst result in the state since World War II.

“This is not a good evening for Merkel,” said Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist at Berlin's Free University. “The SPD is strengthened by this election, which will stir things up in Berlin.”

Elections in NRW have a history of influencing national politics. Seven years ago, a humiliating loss for then-Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's SPD in the state prompted him to call an early election, which he lost to Merkel.

For the past two years, the SPD and the Greens have run a fragile minority government under the leadership of the SPD's Hannelore Kraft, a tram-worker's daughter with a common touch whose victory on Sunday could propel her to national prominence.

Sigmar Gabriel, national leader of the SPD, said the convincing win could prompt speculation that Kraft would take on Merkel in the federal vote next year, even though she has vowed to stay in NRW. The SPD is due to pick a challenger to Merkel by the end of the year.

“This is a clear signal to Berlin,” said Kraft, wiping tears from her eyes in a disco in the state capital Düsseldorf where jubilant SPD supporters held celebrations.

A Socialist victory in France, coupled with the NRW result, will give the SPD, which trails Merkel in national opinion polls, new momentum before the federal vote in September 2013.

The chancellor needs the support of her centre-left rivals to pass a new “fiscal compact” that is meant to anchor budget discipline across the EU. But the SPD is pressing her to delay a parliamentary vote on the pact, keen for the government to commit to new growth measures beforehand.

NRW, which shares a border with Belgium and the Netherlands, is one of Germany's most diverse states.

It is home to one third of the country's blue-chip companies but also some of its poorest cities. Coal and steel firms in the Ruhr region where Kraft grew up once fuelled Germany's post-war economic miracle. Now many have been shuttered and unemployment in some areas is double the national average.