Friedrich Merz’s centre-right CDU faces a regional election on Sunday, the first of several this year in which it hopes to stem the rise of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).

Voters will head to the polls in Baden-Württemberg, a prosperous hub of Germany’s auto sector with a population of 11.2 million. A year after winning national elections, the CDU is aiming to snatch first place in the south-western state from the Greens, who have won the last two state elections.

Merz’s party until recently enjoyed large poll leads in the state, but these have shrunk in recent months. The latest survey put the CDU and the Greens neck and neck on 28%.

Leading the CDU into the election is Manuel Hagel, 37, a former bank branch manager whose campaign hit a rough patch over comments he made about female students during a school visit in 2018, which were judged sexist and inappropriate. He has since apologised for the remarks.

The Greens’ lead candidate is Cem Özdemir, 60, who, if he wins, would become Germany’s first state premier of Turkish heritage.

The AfD has been polling at 18%, which would be a record score for the anti-immigration party in Baden-Württemberg but still short of its national poll rating of about 25%, similar to the CDU.

On Friday, Merz attended the CDU’s final campaign rally and said the vote would be watched outside Germany by people who would ask “Is the CDU still able to win elections, even when in government at such a turbulent time?”

A poor showing in the state, traditionally a CDU stronghold, would be an inauspicious start for Merz’s party in a year of regional votes in which it hopes its tougher migration policy will win back AfD voters.

On 22 March, it will aim to beat the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) in the western state of Rhineland-Palatinate. A series of regional votes will follow in September in the formerly communist eastern Germany, in which the AfD can expect to perform well.

Baden-Württemberg is home to some of the biggest names in Germany’s important but ailing car industry, such as Porsche and Mercedes-Benz. Like other sectors in Germany, the car industry has been battling challenges from high energy prices to increased competition from China.

Brian Fuerderer, 34, the head of a local company making surgical equipment, told Agence France-Presse he found the electoral campaign “weak”. He said the parties were “avoiding the most essential issue … the economy” as well as the country’s dependence on foreign energy supplies, thrown into stark relief by the Middle East war.

Merz says boosting Germany’s moribund economy is his priority and has lobbied the EU to weaken its ban on new combustion-engine cars after 2035. Even the Greens’ Özdemir has said there should be more flexibility in the transition to electric vehicles.

Özdemir has a national profile in Germany. He became one of the first MPs of Turkish origin in 1994 and served as agriculture minister under Olaf Scholz, the former SPD chancellor.

If the Greens win on Sunday, Özdemir will take over as state premier from his party colleague Winfried Kretschmann, 77, who has led Baden-Württemberg for 15 years.

Özdemir comes from the “realist” wing of the Greens and has signalled his distance from more leftwing factions of his party. Hans Christian, 44, a businessman, told AFP that Özdemir projected a practical persona that appealed to voters in Baden-Württemberg.

“People think it’s important in times like this for the state premier to be experienced,” he said. “That’s boosted the Greens, because Mr Özdemir simply has more life experience.”

Markus Frohnmaier, the AfD’s lead candidate, has attracted national attention with his links to Russia and Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.

He posted recently on X about a poll that put the party on 20% in Baden-Württemberg. Such a result would be “sensational” for the party, he said, and the best it had scored in a western German state.