SPD Leads in Eastern State Elections

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union finished second behind the left-wing Social Democrats in both the city-state of Berlin and the

economically depressed eastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, according to polls on ARD state television.

Mecklenburg and Berlin are the only two of the country's 16 regions that are still ruled by the Social Democrats in so-called "red-red" coalitions.

The anti-immigrant, neo-Nazi National Democratic Party, or NPD, was expected to to win around 6 percent of
the vote in Mecklenburg, ARD and ZDF estimated.

Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is one of Germany's poorest states, with an 18.2 per cent unemployment rate that is nearly double the national average. Five percent of the vote is needed to be represented in the national assembly.

A 6 percent win gives far-right party parliamentary representation in three of the states from the former communist East Germany after Saxony and Brandenburg, the state that surrounds Berlin, where the German People's Union (DVU) is in parliament. In the western part of the country, the city state of Bremen is the only one where an extreme right wing party, the DVU, is in the state legislature.

Voter turnout was down by about 10 per cent from the last state elections, which commentators said helped the NPD. With the vote uncoupled from national elections for the first time since reunification, and an unusually sunny day beckoning people outdoors, many voters failed to stop in at the booths.

In late polling in Berlin, the CDU trailed the Social Democrats by a clear margin, 31 percent to 21.5 percent. That meant charismatic mayor Klaus Wowereit looked sure to secure a second mandate.

It was one of the lowest scores for the conservatives in Berlin in their history.

But while the conservatives failed to make significant progress in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Merkel's home state, they were neck-and-neck with the Social Democrats.

Exit results in Mecklenburg showed the CDU
winning 28.8 percent of the vote in the state, the center-left
Social Democrats 29.7 percent and the reformed communist
Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) 18.1 percent.

That should allow the SPD and PDS, who have ruled in coalition in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern for the past eight years, to remain in government -- a blow to Merkel, whose CDU was given a decent chance of seizing power.

Voter disillusionment with Merkel's national government in
Berlin, which has been plagued by infighting and struggled to
deliver on promised reforms, has contributed to the rise of
smaller parties like the NPD.

The neo-Nazi NPD has for years been on the march in the economically depressed east, carving out a support base with its crude anti-immigration stance and calls for jobs for the locals.

The party shocked Germany by taking more than nine percent of the votes in the eastern state of Saxony two years ago.