Angela Merkel's future at risk as CDU is ousted from heartland

GERMAN Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives suffered an historic defeat last night in a wealthy state that her party has governed for 58 years.

The loss of Baden-Wrttemberg in south-west Germany means the region - home to Mercedes and numerous other firms which power the export-led economy - will now get its first Green leader.

Although a local election, the result has consequences that will shake the foundations of Ms Merkel's CDU party and may even trigger a leadership challenge against her in the coming weeks.

The CDU polled 38 per cent of the vote, while the Greens pulled in 25 per cent and the Social Democrats (SPD) polled 23.5 per cent. It means the state, which has a population of 11 million, will now be run by a coalition of the Greens and the SPD.

The lowest unemployment in Germany, 4.3 per cent, and an economy growing at 5.5 per cent annually, were numbers not good enough to save incumbent CDU state leader Stefan Mappus.

Also, before the Japanese earthquake and tsunami, he was his party's greatest proponent of nuclear power, with five reactors in the state. The Greens scored big on fears of nuclear power in the wake of the Japan crisis.

A fortnight ago Ms Merkel did a U-turn on nuclear power, pulling the plug on seven atomic stations immediately while the country's other ten are to undergo a three-month review.

The CDU denied it was an election ploy, but 70 per cent of Germans thought otherwise - and the voters of Baden-Wrttemberg punished Ms Merkel and her party for it yesterday.

Ms Merkel's economics and technology minister, Rainer Brderle, intimated it was a vote-getting ploy when he told a group of businessmen that the chancellor's decisions in the run-up to an election were "not always rational".

"This is the beginning of the end for Merkel," said Lienhard Bauer, 53, a in Stuttgart.

"I've been a CDU party member for more than 30 years but I didn't vote CDU this time."

Now Green leader Winfried Kretschmann - a former chemistry teacher - is poised to become state prime minister in Baden-Wuerttemberg.

But nuclear power was not the only reason the CDU was ousted from power in the solidly middle class state. A number of factors coalesced to make Ms Merkel's party vulnerable.

She gave her backing to a controversial and expensive railway station project in Stuttgart which led to extraordinary protests by her core voters that were violently put down by police.

She dithered on bailing out Greece in the euro crisis - and then landed her countrymen with the bill for it.

Then her popular defence minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg was forced to quit after it was found out he cheated on his doctorate.

Some analysts see it as the beginning of the end for her.

Jakob Augstein, a German commentator and publisher, said losing in the "conservative heartland" of Baden-Wrttemberg makes her position untenable.

He said: "Bad mistakes have been made. Merkel has made mistakes. And in her attempt to rectify the consequences, she has made even more. She has lost her political intuition."

In another regional election yesterday in the state of Rhineland-Pfalz, the SPD and the Greens beat Ms Merkel's party to hold on to power.

Last month, Ms Merkel's conservatives were defeated in Hamburg in a state election, and lost they control of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state, last May.