BERLIN _ Chancellor Angela Merkel's junior coalition partner took a beating at the polls on Sunday, with Germany's Social Democrats suffering a sharp drop in the vote for European Parliament and losing the race in the city-state of Bremen for the first time since World War II.
In the European ballot, Merkel's Christian Democrats and its Bavarian CSU affiliate won 28% of the vote, while the SPD saw support slide to 15.5%, according to exit polls from public broadcaster ARD. The opposition Greens benefited from the shift in support, winning 22%, while the far-right Alternative for Germany had 10.5%.
In Bremen, a port city of 680,000 that went to the polls to elect a new administration, the SPD came in second to the CDU, dealing a blow to the party that's governed the state since 1945.
The results are the latest setback for Merkel's 14-month-old coalition, which has been beset with a series of political roadblocks in the chancellor's fourth and final term. The humiliating result for the Social Democrats risks stoking calls to bring down the government among the party's restive base _ which favored a role in the opposition rather than entering a third Merkel alliance.
