Today in Germany we vote for the regional government of North Rhine-Westphalia, but the election will reflect national because it could lose the majority to the conservative Angela Merkel and Liberal allies in the federal Senate.
The seats, in what is the German Laender which has the largest population, are open from 8. The vote is widely seen as a referendum on the six-month government of Chancellor Merkel, especially after the unpopular decision in recent days to grant aid to Greece billionaire.
“The vote is extremely important because it is the first since the federal elections, and elections in this great German state are considered a test (Merkel),” said Gerd Langguth, a political scientist at the University of Bonn University, who is also the biographer Christian Democratic chancellor.
North Rhine-Westphalia has 13 and a half million voters and the economy is more or less equal to that of Poland and the Czech Republic together.
A defeat for the conservative CDU and the FDP Liberal Democrats would lose their majority in the Bundesrat, causing delays to the government program – including tax cuts – agreed after the general election last September.