Merkel's party suffers defeats in 2 German state elections

BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right party was headed for clear defeats in two German state elections on Sunday at the hands of popular governors from parties further to the left, projections showed — six months before a national vote that will determine who succeeds the country's longtime leader.

Sunday’s votes for new state legislatures in the southwestern states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate kicked off an electoral marathon which features another four state ballots and the national election on Sept. 26.

Amid discontent over a sluggish start to Germany’s vaccination drive, with coronavirus restrictions easing only gradually and infections rising again, Merkel’s Union bloc has been hit over the past two weeks by allegations that two lawmakers profited from deals to procure masks early in the coronavirus pandemic.

Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union already faced a challenging task against the states' well-liked governors. Projections for ARD and ZDF public television, based on exit polls and a partial count of votes, indicated that those governors’ parties -- the environmentalist Greens in Baden-Wuerttemberg and the center-left Social Democrats in Rhineland-Palatinate -- were set to finish first, 7 to 9 percentage points ahead of the CDU. The CDU's showings of about 23% and 26%, respectively, would be the party's worst since World War II in both states.

“To say it very clearly, this isn't a good election evening for the CDU,” said the party's general secretary, Paul Ziemiak. “We would have liked different, better results.”

Wolfgang Schaeuble, the speaker of Germany's parliament and a CDU heavyweight, argued that the governors' personalities had been the decisive factor in the elections.

In Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany's only Green party governor, Winfried...