STUTTGART: Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives are bracing for a rout in two key regional polls Sunday, with voters expected to punish Germany's largest party for a face-mask corruption scandal and a series of pandemic setbacks.
The votes for new regional parliaments in the states of Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Wuerttemberg are seen as a bellwether of the nation's mood ahead of September 26 general elections -- which will be the first in over 15 years not to feature Merkel.
Things aren't looking good for the conservatives. Recent surveys have shown that support for Merkel's centre-right CDU/CSU alliance has fallen to a one-year low at around 30 percent as Germans sour on its coronavirus crisis management.
The conservatives should brace for "a slap in the face from voters", said the top-selling Bild daily.
Merkel's centre-right CDU and its Bavarian CSU sister party have been roiled by damaging claims about MPs apparently profiting from face mask deals early on in the pandemic, forcing three lawmakers to step down in recent days.
Deepening the conservatives' woes is growing public anger about a sluggish and bureaucratic vaccination campaign, a delayed start to free rapid testing and stubbornly high infection rates despite months of shutdowns.
Germans could perhaps look past the "mask affair", Der Spiegel weekly wrote, "if citizens felt that the government was doing its job, protecting it from the virus and guiding it through the crisis. But it's not".
In Rhineland-Palatinate, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) have overtaken the CDU in opinion polls, paving the way for popular state premier Malu Dreyer to head another coalition government with the Greens and the pro-business FDP.
Most closely watched will be the vote in Baden-Wuerttemberg, the only German state to have a premier from the Green party.
The left-leaning ecologists there currently govern together with the CDU, in what could serve as a blueprint for the first federal government of the post-Merkel era.
Opinion polls however show the CDU headed for its worst-ever result in the affluent southwestern state, while the Greens have widened their lead.
The environmentalists have also seen their popularity rise nationwide in recent years, on growing concern about climate change.