West German FDP party gets worst blow ever

By press time Sunday, The Free Democratic Party (FDP), which quit Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's government nine days ago, was heading for the worst defeat in its history in regional elections in the state of Hesse.

The small Liberal party, led by Schmidt's former foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, was winning only 3.1 percent of the vote half an hour after the polls closed. The conservative Christian Democratic Union appeared to be heading the poll with 45 percent, closely tailed by Schmidt's Social Democrats with 44.6 percent