As comebacks go, the one celebrated by Hesse Governor Roland Koch on Sunday night, after voters returned his party to power in state elections, was hardly convincing. One year after vote results showed a virtual dead heat between Koch's conservative Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats, the CDU on Sunday came out well ahead of the SPD -- a result that paves the way for a continuation of Koch's decade-old stint as state leader and gives Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is leader of the CDU, a boost early in a year that will see her campaigning for re-election.
The CDU's victory, though, was not the strong start to a busy election year the party had been hoping for. The party emerged with 37.2 percent of the vote, just 0.4 percent better than in elections one year ago -- which was the worst the party had done in Hesse since 1966.
