Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s party has made a disappointing start to a year packed with German state elections, suffering a narrow defeat in an important industrial region after a prominent candidate powered the environmentalist Greens to a come-from-behind victory. Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union was long confident of winning back the governor’s office in Baden-Württemberg, a region of more than 11 million people in southwestern Germany that is home to companies including key automakers. But the party’s poll lead shrank ahead of Sunday’s election thanks to a Green campaign focused on Cem Özdemir, a longtime federal lawmaker and former German agriculture minister.
