STUTTGART, Germany (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives lost power in a regional stronghold yesterday, 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 per cent, 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 per cent, according to projections at