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• BERLIN (AP) -- Germany's most populous state holds an election Sunday, with polls showing good chances of victory for a center-left regional government that Chancellor Angela Merkel has sought to label as irresponsibly spendthrift.
• About 13.2 million people are eligible to vote for the state legislature in North Rhine-Westphalia in western Germany, which includes Cologne, Dusseldorf and the industrial Ruhr region.
• Sunday's election is the third state-level vote this year. It comes a week after a

regional coalition of Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats and the pro-market Free Democrats -- the parties that make up the national government -- lost power in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein.
• It also follows setbacks for Merkel's austerity-led response to the eurozone debt crisis in French and Greek elections last weekend.
• North Rhine-Westphalia, a traditional center-left stronghold, is vot

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