FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) – German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives came in first Sunday in a local election seen as a warm-up for her bid for a fourth term in a national election in the fall.
The results in the small northern state of Schleswig-Holstein were a blow to her main national challenger, Social Democrat Martin Schulz, whose party’s governing coalition was ejected from office there.
The Social Democrats had governed the region of 2.8 million people since 2012 in coalition with the Greens and the small SSW party of the region’s Danish majority.
Exit polls and early returns broadcast by ARD television showed Merkel’s Christian Democrats, headed by local candidate Daniel Guenther, were in the lead with 32.8 percent of the vote, ahead of the second-place Social Democrats who had 26.7 percent.
Defeated Social Democratic governor Torsten Albig called it “a bitter day.”