North Rhine-Westphalia Votes: What to Watch for in Sunday's State Election

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Generally, state elections in Germany are rather mundane affairs. Apart from minor shifts in the balance of power among the country's main political parties, not much changes.

Sunday's election in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state, however, could be different. For months, Chancellor Angela Merkel has been doing her best to avoid missteps ahead of the vote in order to give her fellow Christian Democrat (CDU) Jürgen Rüttgers the best chance possible to be re-elected as the state's governor.

The result, though, has been stasis in Berlin. Since Merkel's own re-election last September, all her party's main reform projects have been on hold pending the North Rhine-Westphalia vote. Tax reform, while a topic of considerable back-and-forth in Merkel's governing coalition with the business-friendly Free Democrats, has not been decided on. A pending health care reform has been put on the back burner. Even a decision on whether to extend the lives of the country's nuclear power facilities has been avoided for the possible damage it could do to CDU election results.

One of the only major decisions taken by Merkel's government since it was sworn in last October was this week's pledge to provide €22.4 billon ($28.6 billion) in aid to ailing Greece over the next three years. Even that decision, say many, came dangerously late as the chancellor tried to delay it until after this Sunday's poll.

A Major Shake-Up

It remains to be seen whether Merkel's strategy of keeping political feathers unruffled will pay off -- or whether it will fail completely. Indeed, with just days to go before the vote, it is looking increasingly risky. The CDU in the state has been beset by a number of campaign finance scandals, including accusations that the party had been offering local companies meetings with Rüttgers in exchange for money. The CDU has lost the 11 percentage point lead it enjoyed over its main challenger, the Social Democrats (SPD) in mid-January and a recent poll shows that support for the party is now equal to that for the SPD, led by Hannelore Kraft.

Even more problematic for Merkel, should her CDU not be returned to power in coalition with the FDP in the state, then her majority in the Bundesrat, Germany's upper legislative chamber, will have vanished, making far-reaching reform on the national stage virtually impossible.

But Merkel isn't the only story of the elections in North Rhine-Westphalia. The vote could pave the way for a major shake-up in German politics on the national level. It could mark a reversal in the SPD's declining fortunes in recent years. And it could be the coming out party for two new parties with national aspirations. SPIEGEL ONLINE tells you what to watch for.

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• Part 1: What to Watch for in Sunday's State Election
• Part 2: Will Merkel Lose the Power to Enact Political Reform?
• Part 3: Can Hannelore Kraft Bring the Social Democrats Back from the Dead?
• Part 4: Is Germany's Future Green?
• Part 5: Headscarves and Minarets