The electoral year of Merkel's succession begins with a sharp drop in the vote for the conservatives of the CDU

A woman walks past a poster of Green candidate Winfried Kretschmann in Stuttgart last Wednesday.RALPH ORLOWSKI / Reuters

The party of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has suffered a double defeat this Sunday with significant falls in two regional elections, according to the exit polls, which consolidate the Greens in Baden-Württemberg with a clear victory and keep as the first forces the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in Rhineland-Palatinate.

The defeats of the conservatives of the CDU mark the beginning of the year of Merkel's succession, which will not appear again in the September generals.

Shortly after the closing of the polling stations, at six in the afternoon, the first polls of the public television ZDF showed that the Greens win in Baden-Württemberg and the Social Democrats of the SPD in Rhineland-Palatinate, which would confirm that their candidates repeat as presidents of their states.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU) registers a significant drop in its support, which could even reach historic lows, according to these first polls.

In Rhineland-Palatinate it would have lost six percentage points compared to the 2016 elections and in Baden-Württemberg, four.

In both cases, it remains the second most voted force.

The elections have been marked by the coronavirus, which has promoted voting by mail.

This year the electoral college of the Hospitalhof, an educational and religious complex in the center of Stuttgart, has changed from the smallest and worst ventilated room of other elections to a huge open space in which the only two tables look like dollhouse miniatures .

At the entrance, Sven Förtsmann, a 31-year-old volunteer, reminded all voters this Sunday that they should use the hydroalcoholic gel dispenser before passing through.

He has had much less work than in other appointments with the polls: the pandemic has forced to have twice the voting points and it is estimated that almost half of the census sent their vote by mail.

The rain and cold finished composing a soulless election day in the capital of Baden-Württemberg, one of the two German Länder, along with Rhineland-Palatiand, which on Sunday elected their leaders for the next five years.

A small impromptu poll outside the school confirmed the enormous popularity that the polls attributed to the current president of the rich and industrial state of Baden-Württemberg (in the south), Winfried Kretschmann.

A dozen people say that either they have voted for him, or they would have no problem doing so if the candidate from their leading party did not convince them.

Kretschmann, a 72-year-old former biology professor, likes him.

"He is sincere, it is easy to identify with him, he does not act facing the gallery," said Sophie Rumpelt, a 28-year-old dental student.

The Greens' candidate started with a 10 percentage point advantage over the next highest voting intention, the CDU.

No one doubted that Kretschmann would win a third term in a state that until his first victory in 2011 had been an impenetrable stronghold of the Conservatives for decades.

Without the excitement of a tight race for the presidency, the interest of these elections is in how painful the defeat of the CDU will be.

Kretschmann has governed this legislature with the Conservatives, but if the numbers allowed him a coalition with the Social Democrats and the Liberals, the CDU could be left out of the regional Executive.

And that would be a bad start for the new president of the CDU, Armin Laschet, who would see his chances of becoming the conservative candidate for the general elections in September diminish.

The elections in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate inaugurate what the Germans call an

electoral

super-year

: six elections coincide in as many states (including Berlin) and federal elections to the Bundestag.

From that appointment will come Merkel's successor, the chancellor who for 16 years at the head of the first European economy has served in a certain way as the leader of the entire Union.

The announced victory of Kretschmann also advances an interesting year for the Greens, who have managed to place second in voting intention for the federals, only behind Merkel's party.

Since they overtook the SPD Social Democrats in the polls, there is more and more talk of a possible black-green coalition (CDU and Greens) in Berlin, similar to the one that Kretschmann has led in Stuttgart these five years.

The ecologist formation is presented as a pragmatic party and willing to assume government responsibilities.

The politician from Baden-Württemberg is his best asset.

It has managed to combine the defense of nature with policies to support economic growth in the state where emblems of German automobile power such as Porsche and Mercedes Benz are based.

"Kretschmann could be from the CDU"

But it remains to be seen whether the

Kretschmann effect can

be extrapolated outside of its state.

Janik Appel, 22, likes the Greens politician, but not his party.

Leaving the Hospitalhof electoral college, he assures that he has voted for the CDU because he believes that it can better defend his interests and those of the state automobile industry.

He is an engineer and works in one of those companies while studying a master's degree.

"I like him.

He is from my region and was a teacher at my school.

I think it has managed well and I like that it has become more conservative and less green as it was at the beginning, ”he says.

The Greens, he adds, are "too left-wing and their program would not be good for the economy."

"Kretschmann could be from the CDU", sentence with a smile.

If the outlook for the CDU did not look good two weeks ago, the so-called

mask scandal

may cause them to still get fewer votes than the polls attributed to them.

In recent days a scandal of alleged corruption has been uncovered that affects at least one of his deputies in the Bundestag and another from the CSU, his Bavarian sister party.

Parliamentarians' companies charged six-figure commissions for brokering the purchase of masks during the first wave of the pandemic.

His political rivals have taken advantage of the last days before the elections to insist that these are not isolated cases, but rather a structural problem of the conservative formation.

"Many people had already voted by mail when the scandal came to light," recalls volunteer Förstmann.

The blow of the alleged corruption could be cushioned.

For now.

But the management of the second wave could also take its toll on the Conservatives.

Polls show that support for the Chancellor's measures is losing steam among the public, fed up after four months of restrictions.

There are six of the electoral race until the federal ones.