Chancellor Angela Merkel's centre-right bloc suffered another defeat on Sunday in a regional election in Germany's poorest state, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, with both her conservatives and their Free Democrat allies losing support.
A first projection by the ARD network at 1615 GMT showed Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) falling to 24 percent from the 28.8 percent won in the sparsely populated state on the Baltic shore in 2006. It was the CDU's worst result ever there.
The Free Democrats (FDP) were only an opposition party in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern assembly in Schwerin but crashed out with a result below the 5 percent threshold - just 3.1 percent after 9.6 percent in 2006.
The eurozone crisis loomed over the campaign ahead of a key vote in the Berlin parliament on eurozone bailout reforms in late September. It has been a dreary year for Merkel. Two years before the next scheduled federal election, the CDU is also slumping in national polls - in part due to general discontent over Merkel and over her hesitant leadership during the eurozone crisis.
The CDU and FDP have suffered a string of bitter setbacks in six state elections this year. The CDU lost control of two states - Hamburg and Baden-Wuerttemberg - it had long ruled.
The Social Democrats (SPD), which has ruled with the CDU in Mecklenburg-Vorpommer since 2006, rose to 36.8 percent from 30.2 percent. The SPD could continue the coalition with the CDU or switch to the Left party, which won 17 percent, or the Greens, which won seats in the state for the first time ever with 8.4 percent.
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