Chancellor Angela Merkel dealt a devastating blow to her main rival on Sunday, four months before national elections, when early results showed her party securing a strong win in a regional vote in Germany's biggest state. Her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) clinched 33 percent of the vote in North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), preliminary results showed, snatching control of the sprawling industrial region which has been a Social Democratic Party (SPD) stronghold for decades. High stakesWith a fifth of Germans - 13.1 million - eligible to vote in North Rhine-Westphalia, an election in the western state is always closely watched. The SPD had already suffered two setbacks since Schulz took over, with the CDU scoring strong victories in the small states of Saarland and Schleswig-Holstein. Her party, she said, offered "justice in the sense of jobs, strong budgets, funds for local communities."

Source: The Local May 14, 2017 17:48 UTC