Corruption allegations and mounting frustration with Germany’s slow vaccination roll-out are threatening to damage Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) in weather-vane state elections this Sunday, as the centre-right party is trying to distance itself from politicians whose companies are alleged to have made profits on the back of mask procurement deals. In the south-western states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, voters will go to the polls this weekend while digesting the allegations that one lawmaker from the CDU and one from its Bavarian sister-party, the CSU, earned six-figure commissions for brokering deals to procure face masks during last year’s first wave of the pandemic. “This is exactly what voters have been waiting for,” wrote commentator Torsten Krauel in Die Welt newspaper. “While they went into lockdown and thousands of self-employed workers faced their ruin, delegates from the conservative bloc dealt with masks like in a bad movie.” While state elections in Germany’s federalised system are more likely to be decided by regional than national dynamics, symbolic defeats for the Christian Democrats in two former strongholds could rein in new leader Armin Laschet’s ambition to lead his party into the national vote in September. Even without the mask scandal, the CDU would not have been expected to emerge triumphant in wealthy Baden-Württemberg. In the home state of Daimler and Porsche, the conservative party comfortably won every election between 1953 and 2011 but has since struggled to maintain a profile against Winfried Kretschmann, a charismatic Green party politician steering a centrist course between ecological reforms and support for local business. Yet recent polls put the CDU at a mere 24% of the vote, 11 percentage points behind the Greens and three behind its own disappointing 2016 result, suggesting the expected defeat could have a historically painful dimension. In Rhineland-Palatinate, by contrast, the Christian Democrats have enjoyed a polling lead on the governing Social Democrats (SPD) for the last two years and throughout the pandemic. But latest surveys show the conservatives shedding support in the former stomping grounds of late chancellor Helmut Kohl, with centre-left state premier Malu Dreyer now favourite to hold on to her post. The outcome in both states could be a so-called “traffic light coalition” between the Green party, the SPD and the pro-business Free Democratic party: a power-sharing solution the Christian Democrats would prefer not to receive too much attention ahead of the national vote. Demoralising defeats in Rhineland-Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg would also pile pressure on the new CDU party chief, Armin Laschet, who was slow to firefight the mask scandal when telling broadcaster ARD on Monday night he was on a “cleaning up” mission: “I am not in the mood to allow this grand project to be destroyed by a few delegates who have nothing but money their minds.” Laschet, who has been in his post for just over 40 days, can at least show results: Nikolas Löbel, whose company is said to have earned €250,000 for brokering a deal between a mask supplier and two private companies in Mannheim and Heidelberg, has since handed in his mandate and resigned from the CDU. CSU delegate Georg Nüsslein, whose company is alleged to have earned a €600,000 commission for facilitating deals between a manufacturer of masks and the federal and Bavarian health ministries, has said he will hold on to his post until the September elections. Nüsslein denies wrongdoing and his lawyer has said he managed during a difficult period to provide help in procuring high-quality masks at a time of crisis “with the help of longstanding contacts to Chinese providers.” His party boss, Markus Söder, is believed to harbour ambitions to lead the CDU/CSU bloc into the national poll. A decision on who the conservatives will field as their candidate to succeed Angela Merkel is expected to be made around Easter. In the meantime, the conservative bloc will hope that a lack of further scandals and an uptick in vaccination rates will improve their standing with the public. A poll published by newspaper Bild on Sunday saw the two allied parties projected to receive 32% of the vote, their lowest result since the start of the pandemic.