Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's party faced a test of its support in a traditional stronghold yesterday as Germany's most populous state held local elections. It was its last challenge at the ballot box this year after a string of miserable showings.
Some 14 million people in North Rhine-Westphalia, which includes the industrial Ruhr region, were entitled to vote for members of about 400 local councils and in mayoral races. The vote is being watched closely ahead of elections to the state legislature next May, when Germany's conservative opposition hopes to end decades of domination by Schroeder's Social Democrats.
Amid widespread anger over Schroeder's drive to trim the welfare state and improve the economy, his party has been battered in a series of state elections this year, as well as in June elections for the European Parliament.
However, party leaders gained confidence from a better-than-expected performance last weekend in the eastern state of Brandenburg, whose governor kept the Social Democrats in power after a campaign in which he defended unpopular cuts in jobless benefits.
Amid infighting over their own reform plans, the main opposition Christian Democrats lost votes in Brandenburg and another eastern state, Saxony.
"After a dry spell, the Social Democratic Party has emerged from the depths," party chief Franz Muentefering declared this week. "More and more people are realizing that the reforms are necessary."
Still, the Christian Democrats' regional leader said his party expected to maintain a "strategic majority."
"The Social Democrats are not out of the depths and will suffer more losses," Juergen Ruettgers told the daily Die Welt on Saturday.
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