German nuclear foes gain in state election

March 28, 2011|Associated Press

Winfried Kretschmanns Greens doubled their voter share in the state of… (THOMAS KIENZLE/AFP/Getty…)

BERLIN — German chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives have suffered a historic defeat in a state ballot after almost six decades in power there, partial results showed yesterday, in an election that amounted to a referendum on the party’s stance on nuclear power.

The opposition antinuclear Greens doubled their voter share in Baden-Wuerttemberg and seemed poised to win their first state governorship, according to calculations based on partial results published by public broadcaster ARD.

“We have secured what amounts to an historic electoral victory,’’ Winfried Kretschmann, the Greens’ leader, told party members in Stuttgart.

The Greens secured 24 percent of the vote, with the center-left Social Democrats down 2 percentage points at 23.2 percent, giving them enough to form a coalition government in the state, the results showed.

Representatives of all parties said the elections were overshadowed by Japan’s nuclear crisis, turning them into a popular vote on the country’s future use of nuclear power. A majority of Germans oppose future use of nuclear power, which they view as inherently dangerous.

Stefan Mappus, a conservative governor who has long been an advocate of nuclear energy, conceded defeat and said his party’s lead in the polls dwindled away in the wake of the disaster at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear facility. “Voters were touched by the terrible events in Japan, those images still haunt people today,’’ he said.

Mappus’s Christian Democrats secured 39.5 percent of the vote and their coalition partner, the probusiness Free Democrats, saw their voter share halved to 5.1 percent — just above the threshold to enter the state legislature, the partial results showed.

The Free Democrats’ national chairman, Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, also said his party was punished for its favorable stance on nuclear energy. “It was a vote on the future of nuclear power,’’ he said.