The German election year started off with a tremendous victory for the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in the regional election in the northern city-state of Hamburg on Sunday.
With projected results of around 48.4 percent of all votes cast, the SPD will likely be able to govern the second largest city of Germany without needing a coalition partner.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-right Christian- Democatic Party (CDU), on the other hand, is facing a historical defeat. They lost more than half of their year 2008 support of 42. 6 percent and edged down to 21.9 percent of the vote, projections showed.
The early election became necessary after the Green Party had abandoned the coalition with the CDU in November of 2010. Final results of the election are not expected before Tuesday of this week.
Christoph Ahlhaus, the outgoing mayor of the City of Hamburg, called the result "a bitter defeat."
Ahlhaus, who reigned Hamburg for less than six months, never managed to get ahead of his Social Democratic opponent Olaf Scholz during the campaign. The former Senator of the Interior took over the office from Ole von Beust in August of 2010.
Scholz called the result "very, very impressive" during a speech delivered before party supporters, briefly after the first projection of results was aired early Sunday evening. He pledged to stick to the promises he had made during his campaign.
Sigmar Gabriel, head of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, said the projected results would serve as "good tailwind" for the upcoming regional elections in other states. Hermann Grohe, general secretary of the Christian-Democatic Party, admitted that the results were a "heavy defeat" for the CDU after its ten-year- long rule in Hamburg.
Observers, however, considered Hamburg to be the safest bet for the Social Democrats of all regional elections coming up this year. It is thus unlikely that such a clear victory could be replicated in any of the other elections.
The Governing Mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, is expected to have a hard time against his challenger Renate Knast of the Green Party in September. Kurt Beck, Social Democratic governor of the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, is facing the threat of losing his absolute majority in the parliament.
Polls for the election in Baden-Wuerttemberg currently show that the Christian-Democatic party of Governor Stefan Mappus is ahead of the Social Democrats.
The Hamburg-results will only have little effect on the federal level of German politics. The Liberal-Conservative coalition already lost its majority in the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, after the election in North Rhine-Westphalia in May 2010.
While the defeat in Hamburg costs Merkel's coalition three seats in the Bundesrat, this will only underscore the current situation that members of both houses have to intensify their negotiation in the future for passing any legislation, just like the case in the welfare reform, which was driven forth by the coalition government.
On the federal level, polls show that Angela Merkel's party, the CDU, is still the most popular party.