Fukushima tsunami sinks Germany’s Angela Merkel

German chancellor, Angela Merkel, has been dealt a humiliating defeat in a state election, losing control of a state that has been in her party's hands since 1953. Results apparently reflected anger over her government's nuclear policy.

In a dramatic reversal of political fortunes, the Green Party now looks set to appoint its first state governor in Germany after Sunday's election in the south-western state of Baden-Württemberg. It was the senior partner in a coalition with the SDP.

The coalition of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) and the Green Party, together, accounted for a combined vote of 48.5 per cent leaving behind a coalition of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Free Democratic Party (FDP), with a tally of 43 per cent.

Already at a disadvantage in the run-up to the polls, the conservatives were badly hit by the Fukushima disaster, which effectively turned the state election into a referendum on nuclear power.

Merkel's decision to take a number of old reactors of the national grid caused confusion in the minds of the electorate as she and her party had only recently invested a lot of political capital in justifying their decision to extend the life of these aged reactors.

Voters perceived the move as political opportunism, an attempt to influence the vote.