BERLIN – Chancellor Angela Merkel's party is considering how to respond to historically bad state election results that a senior member described as a “wake-up call," six months before a national vote that will determine who succeeds Germany's long-time leader.
Final results early Monday confirmed that Merkel's center-right Christian Democratic Union was handily defeated in Sunday's elections by two popular incumbent state governors: the Green party's Winfried Kretschmann in Baden-Wuerttemberg and the center-left Social Democrats' Malu Dreyer in Rhineland-Palatinate.
While the CDU always faced an uphill battle against the pair, the results were painful. It lost the two states — both of which were once strongholds, but have long since