Opinion polls show Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) will win about 22 percent of the vote in the city-state of Berlin on Sunday and come in a distant second to the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), who are forecast to win about 31 percent and stay in power with either the Greens or the Left party.
There could be further bad news for Merkel's centre-right coalition in Berlin on Sunday if her junior coalition partners, the Free Democrats (FDP), fail to win at least five percent of the vote and are ejected from the state assembly.
It would be the fifth time in seven elections this year the FDP failed to win five percent and could raise pressure on the party, which has plunged from a record 14.6 percent in the 2009 federal election, to remove unpopular Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. Polls show the FDP at about 2 percent.
Another surprise on Sunday could be the Pirate Party, a German branch of the party that emerged in Sweden five years ago to campaign for reform of copyright and better privacy in the internet age. Polls show the Pirates winning 9 percent.
Merkel, under fire for her hesitant leadership in the euro zone crisis, is halfway through a four-year term. But election setbacks for her CDU have battered her ahead of a critical vote on euro zone measures in parliament at the end of September.
The SPD, in opposition at the national level since 2009, want their likely reelection in Berlin on Sunday to build up momentum to oust Merkel in the next federal election in 2013.
The SPD has ousted or helped defeat the CDU in Hamburg and Baden-Wuerttemberg this year and remained in power elsewhere.
The CDU has lost five of six regional votes. A bad result in Berlin, Germany's largest city with 3.4 million, would add to Merkel's woes ahead of a vote in the Bundestag on September 29 to give the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF) more powers.
The euro crisis has crept into the campaign in Berlin, with Merkel using a local radio interview ostensibly on city issues to quash talk of an imminent Greek default .
Klaus Wowereit of the SPD, Berlin's charismatic openly gay mayor, should be re-elected for a third term after breaking open what appeared to be a tight battle against the environmentalist Greens party with a strong finishing kick.
A thumping victory could bolster Wowereit's credentials as the darling of the SPD's left and make him a candidate to run against Merkel in 2013. So far former finance minister Peer Steinbrueck, on the SPD's right, has seemed the front runner.
The CDU candidate against Wowereit attracted little enthusiasm and the party will be fortunate to do better than in the last election in 2006 -- 21.3 percent. The Greens are projected to win 18 percent while the Left -- Wowereit's current partners in city government -- are expected to win 11 percent.
A spate of apparently random night-time arson attacks on cars in Berlin, with more than 530 set alight, gave the CDU a chance to attack Wowereit's record on crime-fighting.
The mayor's distinctive Berlin accent, charismatic smile and popular touch, exploited in strikingly-photographed posters, have lifted his party in polls. One of the posters shows a toddler with an impish smile trying to bite off Wowereit's nose with her glove puppet.
Wowereit has ruled in alliance with the Left for 10 years but could switch allegiance to the Greens.
The Greens, whose popularity soared earlier this year in the wake of Japan's nuclear disaster, had hoped to win in Berlin after taking prosperous Baden-Wuerttemberg state off the CDU. With former cabinet minister Renate Kuenast as their mayoral candidate, the Greens were ahead in some polls in late 2010 and early 2011, until Wowereit managed to rally.
