BERLIN — With the national parliamentary election scheduled for September, many in Germany are looking to Lower Saxony, which holds regional elections on Sunday, for clues of what could happen in Berlin this autumn.
Political experts insist that regional elections in Germany have traditionally had little direct influence on the outcome of national elections. But several similarities between Lower Saxony and the German government make it appear a microcosm of the larger political scene.
Like Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government, Lower Saxony’s is led by a center-right coalition of her Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats. The Christian Democratic candidate in the state, David McAllister, is personally popular with voters, as is the chancellor, helping him to close in on his Social Democratic rival, Stephan Weil, making for a tight race.
But also like the chancellor, Mr. McAllister will rely heavily on the Free Democrats’ winning enough votes to earn seats in the regional legislature to continue his current government. In recent surveys, the party has hovered around 5 percent, the threshold needed to secure representation at the regional and national levels.
That polling has focused attention on the vote in Lower Saxony as a make-or-break moment for the party and perhaps even for Ms. Merkel’s coalition in Berlin.
The Free Democratic Party ended a string of losses at the regional level by winning slightly more than 8 percent of the vote in two states last year, North Rhine-Westphalia and Schleswig-Holstein. But for now that performance has not translated into a stronger position at the national level.
Many blame a lack of leadership. The party chairman, Philipp Rösler, who also serves as economy minister, consistently ranks as among the country’s least-popular politicians. But Karl-Rudolf Korte, a professor of politics at the University of Duisburg-Essen, says the party’s problems reach deeper than who is at its helm.
“It is not a problem of personality — it is a problem of issues,” Mr. Korte said.
Regardless of the outcome Sunday, he predicts that the party would be well advised to go for a two-pronged approach, keeping Mr. Rösler as its leader, but choosing the party’s parliamentary leader, Rainer Brüderle, as its main candidate because of his popularity.
Traditionally the Free Democrats have provided a clear voice for individual citizens’ rights against an overly powerful nanny state. They have served in more governments in postwar Germany than any other political party, although as the junior coalition partner. Two respected presidents, Theodor Heuss and Walter Scheel, hailed from the Free Democrats, as did an influential former foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher.
Four years ago, the Free Democratic Party, or F.D.P., emerged with its strongest showing ever, earning 14.6 percent of the vote after campaigning on a promise to cut taxes. But with the euro crisis, that promise has been watered down and the party has failed to find other issues that resonate with voters.
At a party congress this month, Mr. Brüderle sought to drum up support by singling out legislation passed by the current coalition that clearly reflected the Free Democrats’ influence.
“The F.D.P. made the union better,” he said of the coalition, citing the scrapping of required military service, a €10 payment at doctors’ offices, policies affecting growth and consumer protection laws. “We need to believe in ourselves then many others will believe in us.”
A poll by the Forsa Institute, published by the weekly Stern on Wednesday showed the Free Democratic Party getting only 3 percent support, which would translate to their ejection from lower house of Parliament, the Bundestag.
Such an outcome would force Ms. Merkel, whose center-right Christian Democrats appear to be stronger than ever, earning 43 percent support in the Forsa survey, to find a new partner in government.
The center-left Social Democrats, however, polled their lowest since 2011, earning only 23 percent, largely because of a plunge in popularity for their candidate in the national election, Peer Steinbrück.
Manfred Güllner, who heads the Forsa Institute, said that even if the Social Democratic candidate in Lower Saxony, Mr. Weil, could pull off a victory, it would be unlikely to translate into increased support for Mr. Steinbrück.
“The latest survey shows that peoples’ image of Mr. Steinbrück has become increasingly negative,” Mr. Güllner said. “People view him as greedy, arrogant and awkward. Very few people associate him with political competence.”
Mr. Steinbrück’s image as a former finance minister who shepherded Germany through the first days of the financial crisis has been battered by a drawn-out debate over his private earnings from a book and, more recently, a comment that Ms. Merkel benefited from a “women’s bonus.”
Even an attempt by Mr. Steinbrück to change that image by inviting undecided voters to his home for a personal talk backfired earlier this week when the media began reporting that the family of a person in Lower Saxony that was selected from 150 candidates included an active member of the party’s local branch.
A victory by the Social Democrats in Lower Saxony, however, could have a greater impact on national politics through the upper house of Parliament, the Bundesrat, which is made up of representatives of the country’s 16 states. Together with their main political allies, the Greens, they could form a majority.
“If a party is clever, such a majority can be used to block, drag out or otherwise delay any legislative procedure,” Mr. Korte said.
That power would effectively hamper the government’s ability to pass legislation, regardless of their popularity.
In Regional Elections, a Microcosm of Trouble Ahead for Merkel
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In Regional Elections, a Microcosm of Trouble Ahead for Merkel
