Germany

Germany’s ruling parties are reeling from their second electoral upset in a fortnight, after voters in a key state abandoned them in droves. The result in the central state of Hesse could plunge both parties of Angela Merkel’s coalition government into renewed crises. Preliminary final results from a regional election seen as decisive for the future of Germany’s increasingly wobbly coalition showed Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) slumping to 27%, the party’s worst showing in the state since 1966 and a drop of 11 percentage points since Hesse last went to the polls in 2013. Yet the CDU was at pains to present the result as a success. The state’s CDU-Green coalition has scraped a majority, putting an end to speculation over the future of the CDU state premier and close Merkel ally, Volker Bouffier. With tensions running high in the CDU, some members have implied that if Bouffier falls, Merkel may struggle if she stands for re-election as party leader at its conference in December.

Voters in the southern German heartland of Bavaria dealt a stinging blow Sunday to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative allies, humbling a party that has governed for decades while boosting either political flank in an election defined by polarized opinions about immigration. The dramatic loss of support for the Christian Social Union (CSU), sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), scrambled politics in a region that has been one of the most politically stable in Europe. Votes for the Bavarian state parliament have rarely been competitive in modern lifetimes, with the CSU crafting a “laptops to lederhosen” approach that coupled its support for high-tech industry with its embrace of traditional culture. For decades, the CSU came as close as Western Europe gets to a state party.

Angela Merkel’s conservative partners in Bavaria have had their worst election performance for more than six decades, in a humiliating state poll result that is likely to further weaken Germany’s embattled coalition government. The Christian Social Union secured 37.2% of the vote, preliminary results showed, losing the absolute majority in the prosperous southern state it had had almost consistently since the second world war. The party’s support fell below 40% for the first time since 1954. Markus Söder, the prime minister of Bavaria, called it a “difficult day” for the CSU, but said his party had a clear mandate to form a government. Among the main victors was the environmental, pro-immigration Green party, which as predicted almost doubled its voter share to 17.5% at the expense of the Social Democratic party (SPD), which lost its position as the second-biggest party, with support halving to 9.7%.

Germany said on Wednesday hackers had breached its government computer network with an isolated attack that had been brought under control and which security officials were investigating. A spokesman for the German Interior Ministry said the affected government agencies had taken appropriate measures to investigate the incident and protect data. “The attack was isolated and brought under control within the federal administration,” which oversees government computer networks, he said in a statement, adding that the authorities were addressing the incident“with high priority and significant resources”.