That was made evident yet again on Sunday when her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) suffered their worst ever result in Germany’s most populous state of North-Rhine Westphalia. The party only managed to get just over 26 percent of the vote in the snap election, shedding almost 9 points since securing 35 percent in the last vote there in 2010.

Her junior coalition partners the Free Democrats did manage an impressive comeback, securing a surprise 8 percent and managing to return to the state parliament thanks to its dynamic leader in the state, Christian Lindner. However, the disastrous performance by the CDU will allow the Social Democrats and Greens to form a stable coalition, after operating as a minority government for the past two years.

The SPD won 39 percent of the vote in what had been its traditional heartland, largely thanks to the huge popularity of its leading candidate, state governor Hannelore Kraft. The Greens only fell back slightly, down from 12 to 11 percent, a relief given the strong showing of the Pirates who stormed into their fourth regional parliament after securing almost 8 percent. The post-communist Left Party only attracted just over 2 percent, compared to over 5 percent in 2010, and thus failing to enter parliament.

North Rhine-Westphalia is often a strong indicator of the national mood. When former SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder suffered a defeat there in a state vote in 2005 he called an immediate snap general election, which paved the way for Merkel’s rise to power.

Now, seven years later, could the bruising defeat in that state again be a harbinger of change at the federal level?

Even though the CDU had been braced for defeat on Sunday, the extent of the drubbing left the party reeling. “We have been bludgeoned,” said Peter Altmaier, the CDU’s chief whip in the Bundestag, on Sunday.

Their campaign had been a disaster, with their leading candidate Norbert Roettgen infuriating voters by failing to commit to giving up his current job as federal environment minister to lead the state opposition if the CDU were defeated. As such yet another possible internal rival to Merkel has been eliminated. Yet this also signals a defeat for a man who represented the moderate center of the party, and particularly for a possible coalition with the Greens.

While the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia are left to lick their wounds, Merkel and the party strategists in Berlin will have to assess the vote’s significance for the party’s chances of holding onto power after next year’s federal election.

The party had been working on the assumption that the FDP would continue to implode and that the CDU would need to form a new alliance either with the SPD or with the Greens, who it was assumed would fail to muster enough support for a coalition of their own.

Now the victory in a state that is home to one in four Germans points to a possible resurgence of the SPD and Green alliance. However, it might be unwise to assume that the parties could achieve a similar result on a national level and revive their coalition of 1998-2005.

After all much of the victory on Sunday is being attributed to the successful duo of the SPD’s Kraft and the Green party leader and deputy governor Sylvia Loehrmann. The two women worked extremely well together, managing to form alliances with the other parties on a range of issues, and seemed to present a less harsh, more socially oriented governing style. “We put people at the heart of this election campaign,” Kraft said on Sunday.

The SPD at a national level is far less popular, and it has still not decided who will challenge Merkel at the next federal election. The current troika of leaders, Peer Steinbrueck, Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Sigmar Gabriel lack the common touch and warmth displayed by Kraft. They are also more associated with the severe welfare cuts and labor market reforms of the previous SPD-led government, which alienated much of the party’s traditional base.