Merkel gets boost from big win in Bavarian poll

Chancellor Angela Merkel's prospects to clinch a third four-year term in Germany's parliamentary election next week received a boost after her allies scored a resounding win in the southern state of Bavaria.
Merkel's Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU), regained the absolute majority in the state parliament in Munich, which they lost in the last election in 2008.
However, the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP), which ruled the state during the last five years in a coalition with the CSU, lost its representation in the state legislature in Munich for failing to cross the threshold of five per cent of the votes.

The CSU polled 47.7 per cent of the votes compared to 20. 6 per cent received by the Social Democratic Party (SPD), according to provisional results published on Sunday night.
The share of votes for the FDP dropped to 3.3 per cent from 8 per cent in 2008 while the Green party and the party of free voters received 8.6 per cent and 9 per cent votes respectively.
Chancellor Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), its Bavarian sister party CSU and the business-friendly FDP have formed a coalition in Berlin after the last federal election in 2009.

The latest opinion polls forecast that they have a narrow lead over an opposition alliance of the SPD and the ecological Green party.

If the FDP repeats its performance in Bavaria at the national level in the elections on Sunday, Merkel's CDU and its Bavarian sister party will have to seek a new coalition partner from the opposition to form a new government.
Bavaria's ballot was widely seen as a test for the national election.
State prime minister and CSU chairman Horst Seehofer told his cheering supporters in Munich that the outcome of the election was a "great success".
A "grand coalition" with the SPD is seen as the most likely alternative if the FDP fails to gain representation in the Bundestag, lower house of parliament in Sunday's vote.