After six state election setbacks so far this year, German Chancellor Angela Merkel faces a final humiliation in Berlin as polls show the Pirate Party poised to oust her coalition ally in the regional parliament.
The rise of the Pirates to a record 9 percent in a poll today, putting them within reach of their first parliamentary seats in the city-state’s Sept. 18 elections, caps a year in which voters punished Merkel’s coalition over its handling of the debt crisis. As her Christian Democrats and Free Democratic coalition partner descend into open conflict over the euro’s future and financial aid to Greece, the chancellor’s 2013 bid for re-election with her current political ally may be in doubt.
