Testing times for Merkel in German state votes

German voters go to the polls Sunday in the first of three quick-fire state ballots which could hand Chancellor Angela Merkel's coalition ally a drubbing ahead of a 2013 national election. After a gruelling seven regional votes last year, Merkel and her junior Free Democrats were only slated to fight one in 2012, but that unexpectedly swelled to three after the sudden collapse of two state governments. Analysts say the three votes, taking place over a eight-week period, pose no direct challenge to the chancellor, whose conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), as well as her own approval rating, is riding high in the polls. However, all eyes will be on the fate of her junior coalition partner, the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP), who, polls suggest, could be kicked out of all three regional parliaments. "The situation for the FDP is quite serious, and we know that," Christian Lindner, the party's main hopeful in the pivotal western North Rhine-Westphalia state election on May 13, said on ZDF television. As Germany's most populous state with 18 million people and a major industrial base, NRW's centre-left minority government fell after just 22 months over a budget dispute. The state historically plays a big role in federal politics -- in 2005, a lost vote in NRW prompted then chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to call a snap federal election, which he then lost to Merkel. A week later, another strategically-important vote takes place in northern Schleswig-Holstein. But the electoral season kicks off Sunday in Saarland, a small region of about 800,000 voters bordering France and Luxembourg, where the CDU is polling neck-and-neck with the main opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD). Both parties' leading candidates have indicated a willingness to form a "grand coalition", leaving the question of which of them will head it as state premier the only likely suspense in the race. The snap vote in the western state, whose traditional coal mining industry has been replaced by car and other manufacturing, was called after the coalition of FDP, CDU and Greens collapsed in January. Results in the three polls will give Merkel key pointers ahead of fighting for a third time in office in the 2013 national vote, Werner Weidenfeld, of the centre for applied political research at Munich's LMU university, said. "The state legislative elections indicate how the majorities in Germany fall into place in view of the next general elections," he said. The FDP peaked in the last national election, grabbing more than 14 percent of the vote and formed a coalition government with Merkel's CDU. But it has since seen its ratings dwindle amid internal squabbling and political strategies that have backfired. Humiliatingly, it also lost its parliamentary footing in five of last year's regional elections, and it defied Merkel last month in supporting Joachim Gauck as Germany's new president, backing her into a corner. Despite a leadership change, the party under its current head Philipp Roesler who is economy minister and vice-chancellor, also risks missing the all-important five percent hurdle to enter the Bundestag lower house of parliament in 2013. Its woes, though, hardly seem to have distracted Merkel who, at the helm of Europe's biggest economy, has grimly steered Europe out of the debt crisis that brought Greece to the brink of bankruptcy. "The mood has never been better in Germany if you ask people how they feel about their own personal situation. The overall economic situation is estimated to be very, very good," Reinhard Schlinkert of Infratest dimap polling institute said. "So in principle you won't be successful at the moment if you say we have a bad government."