Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives lost power in a regional stronghold on Sunday, with early poll results showing the Greens, buoyed by Japan’s nuclear crisis, surging to their first state premiership.
In Baden-Wuerttemberg state, where anti-nuclear sentiment has been mobilised by Japan’s nuclear breakdown, the Greens and Social Democrats (SPD) were set to win 47.3 percent, eclipsing the Christian Democrats who held power there for six decades.
Merkel’s CDU and their Free Democrat coalition partners, big backers of nuclear power, won a combined 44.3 percent, according to projections at 1800 GMT in the state of 11 million people.
