Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition suffered a stinging defeat in a state poll Sunday that cost it its majority in the upper house, preliminary results showed, amid voter anger over a Greek bail-out.
Just two days after parliament approved the colossal rescue package for Greece, voters in the western region of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), Germany's most populous state, handed Merkel's centre-right alliance a bruising setback.
Merkel's Christian Democrats won around 34 percent with coalition allies the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) polling 6.6 percent, leaving them well short of a majority they enjoyed in the state legislature.
Meanwhile, the opposition centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) also polled around 34 percent, the Greens 12.5 percent and the relatively new political outfit, the far-left Linke party, scored six percent. The results mean that the two strongest parties will scramble to cobble together other alliances, or perhaps link up to form a "grand coalition".
NRW is ruled by the same centre-right coalition Merkel has in Berlin, making the poll a damaging referendum on her government eight months after she won re-election.
The state is also home to the Ruhr rust belt region whose economic misery has deepened in the recession. The impact on the national level was already clear, with Merkel's centre-right sacrificing its majority in the Bundesrat upper house. This will hobble the chancellor in pushing through key reforms in Europe's top economy.
The timing of the election could hardly have been worse for Merkel's centre-right alliance, who have ruled NRW since 2005. Germans strongly oppose the 22.4 billion euros (28.6 billion dollars) in loans over three years to debt-wracked Greece approved Friday as Germany grapples with its own dire fiscal straits.
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