This is quite a big jump for the Greens who won less than half of the votes in the previous election. Angela Merkel's center-right party still polled well but lost enough votes to fall out of control of the prosperous state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. Merkel's CDU had controlled the state since 1953. The nuclear issue was a contributing factor but voter fatigue with Merkel's policies was also an issue. The Guardian:
The chancellor's Christian Democratic Union party, or CDU, had ruled the region's state legislature for almost 58 years, but found itself on the wrong side of the nuclear debate following Fukushima. Even before the Japanese earthquake, the party was unpopular locally for sanctioning a multibillion euro project to build a railway station in Stuttgart.
Support for the CDU slumped from 44.2% in the 2006 state election to 39%, according to official results.
The state parliament's new leader would be Winfried Kretschmann, 62, a spiky-haired former science teacher. He is likely to become the Green party's first regional "minister president" after his party gained 25% of the vote; enough, when combined with the 23.1% for the centre-left Social Democratic party, to form a coalition. Minister presidents are powerful on a national as well as a regional level, because they have a vote in Germany's upper house, the Bundesrat, and can veto legislation.
