The most populous state of Germany to vote for the party of Angela Merkel
The vote in the Federal state of North Rhine—Westphalia ended with the victory of the Christian democratic Union (CDU) of Angela Merkel. The CDU scored 33% of votes, ahead of his main rival Social democratic party of Germany from 31.2% of the vote. Despite minimal at first glance, the gap in this success experts and the media saw a good sign for Angela Merkel, because the vote in the most populous land of the country took place just four months before the Federal elections to the Bundestag.
The results of the voting in the Parliament of the Federal state of North Rhine—Westphalia passed five parties. The conservatives from the CDU, which supported 33% of voters, obtained 72 seats, the social Democrats 69 seats. As predicted by “Kommersant”, the green Party, who are now part of the local ruling coalition, the vote ended with a loss of more than half of the seats in the end they were left with 14 seats. The free democratic party, on the contrary, could show your best score, receiving 28 seats (it is likely to enable it to enter into ruling coalition together with the CDU). Finally, for the first time in the regional Parliament, held a protest populist party “Alternative for Germany”: it was supported by 7.4% of voters (more than the green, left and pirate Party), which means that 16 seats in the Assembly.
“Three-zero in favor of Merkel,” writes the conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
Indeed, the elections in the most populous land in the country (including major urban areas like Cologne and düsseldorf) followed by two other regional polls, which also was won by the party of the Chancellor, in Saarland and Schleswig-Holstein. Not surprisingly, four months before the parliamentary election, many called the vote on Sunday a “test” for Chancellor Angela Merkel. As said today the head of her Chancellery Peter Altmaier, this success the Chancellor really “brought it in the net”, but I’ll try not to relax and celebrate a premature victory.
To project the results of the vote in NRW (Germany shorten the long name of the region) at the Federal level should, of course, be careful. After all, the party of Mrs Merkel already lost the elections to this earth in 2010 and 2012. And in recent times has shown the worst in the history of voting in this region the result is 26%. Nevertheless, even then, after the parliamentary elections of 2013, Ms. Merkel has been able to retain his post of Federal Chancellor.
Galina Dudina