Una Merkel in trouble? One can only hope.

[No Elephants]

But I doubt she's really in trouble.

Please, let me be wrong.

Jan 20, 1:19 AM EST

Merkel risks election-year setback in state vote

By GEIR MOULSON
Associated Press

BERLIN (AP) -- A major state election on Sunday could shake up the campaign for Germany's national election later this year, with the center-left opposition hoping for a morale-boosting victory over Chancellor Angela Merkel's governing coalition.

Some 6.1 million people are eligible to vote for a new state legislature in Lower Saxony, which occupies a swathe of northwestern Germany. It's been run for the past decade by a coalition of Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats and the pro-market Free Democrats, the same parties that form the national government.

The vote is a significant electoral test before national parliamentary elections in September, in which Merkel will seek a third four-year term. She and her party are riding high in polls, but the opposition hopes Lower Saxony will show she is vulnerable.

Pre-election polls in the state showed a neck-and-neck race between her coalition and the opposition Social Democrats and Greens, who have been struggling to gain traction nationally.

Much more at http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/E/EU_GERMANY_ELECTION?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-01-20-01-19-55