Scholz's center-left party heads for big win in German state

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's center-left Social Democrats were headed for a clear election win Sunday in a western state that their conservative rivals have led since 1999, projections showed, in the first test at the ballot box since Scholz's national government took office in December.

Social Democrat Anke Rehlinger was on course to become the new governor of Saarland, a region on the French border that is one of Germany's smallest states, with nearly 1 million people. Projections for ARD and ZDF television based on exit polls and early counting of votes for the state legislature put support for the Social Democrats at around 43%, well ahead of the center-right Christian Democratic Union's roughly 27.5% of the vote.

It's not clear that Rehlinger's success had much to do with an eventful first 100 days for Scholz's three-party national coalition, during which Russia's war in Ukraine prompted the chancellor to upend German defense policy and Germany has welcomed large numbers of refugees. The country also is grappling with a persistent wave of coronavirus infections, recently seeing over 200,000 new cases on many days.

All the same, it was the first of three state elections within two months — all in regions currently led by governors from the CDU, the party of former Chancellor Angela Merkel — that will help set the political tone for the coming year. The most important vote, on May 15, is in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia.

Saarland has been run for the past decade by a coalition of the CDU, now the main opposition party at national level, and the Social Democrats. Pre-election polls showed voters preferring Rehlinger, the state's deputy governor and economy minister since 2014 and a deputy national leader of her party, to CDU incumbent Tobias Hans.

"This is the result of hard work over recent years," Rehlinger told supporters. "We have won back people's confidence."

Five years ago, the CDU took 40.7% of the vote in Saarland and Rehlinger won only 29.6% for the Social Democrats. The CDU's national general secretary, Mario Czaja, said Sunday's outcome was "a painful result."

New CDU leader Friedrich Merz had tried to downplay the election even before the vote. He said last week that "we have always been good in Saarland when the left was divided, and that is over now."

A collapse in support for the opposition Left Party likely helped Rehlinger. The hard-left party was long a significant player in Saarland, but the projections showed it losing its seats in the state legislature.

Co-founder Oskar Lafontaine, a one-time Social Democrat who was Saarland's governor in the 1980s and 1990s, recently quit the Left Party amid persistent infighting. That came after the party only narrowly avoided being ejected from the German parliament in September's national election.