Conservatives lose in Hesse
German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives suffered heavy losses in an election in the western state of Hesse, dealing her a blow ahead of next year’s national vote.
Longtime Hesse governor and Merkel ally Roland Koch had run a bitterly divisive campaign, advocating crackdowns on foreign criminals, which was backed by the chancellor but ultimately backfired.
His Christian Democrats took 36.6% of the vote, down sharply from the 49% they scored in the last Hesse election in 2003, and a shade behind the rival Social Democrats at 36.9%, preliminary results showed.
In a separate election in the northwestern state of Lower Saxony, Christian Democratic Gov. Christian Wulff held on to power but saw his support dwindle.
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