From outside Germany, Angela Merkel has long looked invincible. She has come to symbolise Germany's political scene as Margaret Thatcher once did Britain's.
But on Monday morning she saw her centre-right coalition narrowly ousted by the opposition centre-left in a regional election that shifts the balance of power in Germany and could have profound implications for her chances of re-election in September.
She told a press conference in Berlin that the result in Lower Saxony was "emotionally difficult" to deal with after the "rollercoaster" expectation that the Christian Democrat and liberal Free Democrat (FDP) coalition led by the half-Scottish David McAllister would narrowly succeed. It is a blow to her hopes for a boost as she fights for a third term in office, and as the 12th consecutive defeat for her party at state level it will give the centre-left a majority in the upper house, allowing the opposition to block major legislation or initiate laws that could make Merkel's life extremely difficult.
Gerd Langguth, Merkel's biographer and a political scientist at Bonn University, called the election "a veritable wake-up call" for Merkel. "While she still has a definite majority at the federal level, and she can still be re-elected, this has taken the wind out of her sails somewhat," he said.
The election proved to be one of the most nail-biting German polls in recent years, with results initially indicating McAllister's coalition had succeeded by one seat, then suggesting a dead-heat, and finally showing that the Social Democrats and Greens had secured 68 seats in the Hanover parliament, one more than the incumbents. The biggest shock of the evening was the FDP's ability to come from a very weak position in which it was in danger of nearly failing to get even the minimum 5% needed to get into parliament, to secure almost 10%.
That, it turns out, was the result of tactical voting by CDU supporters anxious to see a continuation of the centre-right alliance, but came at the expense of Merkel's party, whose support fell by six points to 36%.
Analysts said no less than 100,000 CDU voters had given their votes to the FDP. The FDP leadership was nevertheless in celebratory mood. It rejected an offer to resign by party leader Philipp Rösler, who had been widely expected to go, but signalled a change in its election strategy by naming veteran Rainer Brüderle as its new main candidate for September's poll.
Analysts said the CDU would no doubt change its tactics ahead of the national election and stress that every vote counted, in order to steer against another tactical voting disaster.
"The CDU will, I'm sure, stress their independence far more and fight for every vote," said Oskar Niedermayer, a political analyst at Berlin's Free University. "Far more important than switching votes between parties, which is merely a redistribution of them, would be for the parties to have stronger campaigns that mobilise voters far more."
McAllister announced he would not lead his party in opposition. His political future is now uncertain as he is likely to take at least some of the blame for his supporters' tactical voting after strongly hinting to CDU voters that they should give one of their two votes to the FDP.
He had been originally expected to get a place on the national stage if his party failed to be re-elected due to a poor FDP performance. Shocked CDU leaders huddled together to rework their election strategy after some called for a rethink of the party's plan to focus on Merkel's personality in the run-up.
The Lower Saxony election was very much a personality-led race, pitting the charismatic McAllister – whose unique selling point, his Scottishness, was played to the hilt – against the wooden SPD candidate, Stephan Weil.
Bagpipes and talk of Scots' thriftiness shaped McAllister's rallies, and Merkel was brought in to support him, earning him the nickname "Merkel's Mac" and heightening speculation that he might one day succeed her. But analysts said that it appeared that while McAllister and Merkel were indeed popular politicians, the vote showed that popularity cannot be as easily translated into votes in Germany as had been thought.
That did not stop 58-year-old Merkel giving McAllister her full backing, as she called him "one of the best and most able heads of the CDU".
"He is a young man in comparison to someone of my age," she said of the 42-year old as he sat next to her looking somewhat morose.
The biggest single winner of the night was the Green party, which won 13.7%, its best ever result in the state. But Green leaders were quick to dash speculation that they would enter a coalition with the CDU at federal level. Doris Schröder-Kopf, 49, wife of former chancellor Gerhard Schröder, won a seat in the Hanover parliament and is expected to become an integration commissioner in the new government
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