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		</div><p>German Chancellor Angela Merkel&#8217;s party has won a state election in one of their centre-left rivals&#8217; traditional heartlands.</p>
<p>Victory for Mrs Merkel&#8217;s Christian Democrats in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia, which includes Cologne, Duesseldorf and the Ruhr industrial region, is a stinging blow to Germany&#8217;s Social Democrats party.<br />
The region is Germany&#8217;s most populous and has been led by the Social Democrats for all but five years since 1966.</p>
<p>It is home to 17.9 million people, nearly a quarter of Germany&#8217;s population, and is also the home state of Martin Schulz, the Social Democratic challenger seeking to deny Mrs Merkel a fourth term in the national election on September 24.</p>
<p>Projections based on partial counting, showed the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) beating the Social Democrats by about 34% to a little over 30.5%. They gave the Greens, the junior coalition partners in the outgoing state government, only 6%.</p>
<p>That means governor Hannelore Kraft&#8217;s coalition with the Greens lost its majority in the state legislature. And it puts conservative challenger Armin Laschet, a liberal-minded deputy leader of Mrs Merkel&#8217;s party, in a position to replace her.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;The CDU has won the heartland of the Social Democrats,&#8221;</i> said the conservatives&#8217; general secretary, Peter Tauber, calling it a &#8220;great day&#8221; for the party.</p>
<p><i>&#8220;This is a difficult day for the Social Democrats, a difficult day for me personally as well,&#8221;</i> Mr Schulz told reporters in Berlin. <i>&#8220;I come from the state in which we took a really stinging defeat today.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>But he urged the party to concentrate on the national election. He said that &#8220;we will sharpen our profile further &#8211; we have to as well.&#8221;</p>
<p><i>&#8220;We will continue fighting; the result will come on September 24,&#8221;</i> Mr Schulz said.</p>
<p>The Social Democrats&#8217; national ratings soared after Mr Schulz, a former European Parliament president, was nominated in January as Mrs Merkel&#8217;s challenger. But defeats in two other state elections since then had already punctured the party&#8217;s euphoria over Mr Schulz&#8217;s nomination, and its ratings have sagged.</p>
<p>Sunday&#8217;s election was the last before the national vote.</p>
<p>Mrs Kraft announced that she was stepping down as the Social Democrats&#8217; regional leader. The projected result is the party&#8217;s worst in North Rhine-Westphalia since the Second World War.</p>
<p>The projections put support for the pro-business Free Democrats, who are eyeing a return to the national parliament at September, at a strong 12%. The party &#8211; whose national leader, Christian Lindner, led its election effort in North Rhine-Westphalia &#8211; has tended to ally with Mrs Merkel&#8217;s conservatives over recent decades.</p>
<p>The nationalist Alternative for Germany was seen winning 7.5%, giving it seats in its 13th state legislature, and the opposition Left Party around 5%.</p>
<p>A likely outcome appeared to be a &#8220;grand coalition&#8221; of the biggest parties under Mr Laschet, though it was also possible that a slim centre-right majority for the CDU and Free Democrats would emerge.</p>
<p>A &#8220;grand coalition&#8221; would mirror Mrs Merkel&#8217;s national government, in which the Social Democrats are the junior partners.</p>
<p>After a blaze of publicity earlier this year, Mr Schulz &#8211; who chose not to join the government when he returned to Germany after being president of the European Parliament &#8211; has struggled to maintain a high profile.</p>
<p>In the North Rhine-Westphalia campaign, Mrs Merkel&#8217;s conservatives sought to portray Mrs Kraft&#8217;s government as slack on security, and also assailed what they said is regional authorities&#8217; poor handling of education and infrastructure projects.</p>
<p>Health minister Hermann Groehe, a conservative, said his party had &#8220;tailwind&#8221; from the national level, but Sunday&#8217;s vote was &#8220;a decision about state politics.&#8221;</p>
<p><i>&#8220;There was no tailwind from Mr Schulz that could have balanced that out,&#8221;</i> he said.</p>
<p>Mrs Merkel&#8217;s party seemed keen not to appear too euphoric. Asked about Germany&#8217;s government after September her chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, said that <i>&#8220;we always have to keep a cool head &#8230; we shouldn&#8217;t talk about coalitions before the harvest is in.&#8221;</i></p>
<p>National polls show the Social Democrats trailing Mrs Merkel&#8217;s conservatives by up to 10 points after drawing level earlier this year.</p>
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