Protesters with signs that read #nogroko — short for "No grand coalition" — wait for Schulz's arrival in Düsseldorf after exploratory talks with Merkel's CDU | Sascha Steinbach/EPA In heartland, German Social Democrats reject new deal with Merkel Party members voice fears ahead of crunch vote on coalition talks.

DETMOLD, Germany — Angela Merkel’s last hope of a stable government was negotiated in Berlin but it could well die in the provinces.

As Germany’s center-left Social Democrats (SPD) prepare to vote Sunday on whether to go into formal coalition talks with Merkel’s conservatives, members of the SPD base are increasingly voicing strong opposition to the prospect of another so-called grand coalition between the country's two biggest political parties.

That’s especially true in North Rhine-Westphalia, the densely-populated western state long considered the electoral heartland of the SPD — and the home of almost a quarter of the delegates who will vote Sunday at a conference in Bonn on a blueprint for talks agreed in the capital last Friday.

In conversations with more than a dozen local and state-level SPD members and officials, the same theme arose time and again: Many see the 28-page coalition blueprint, hammered out in preliminary talks between the SPD and Merkel’s CDU/CSU bloc, as proof that the SPD would be giving everything for a grand coalition and receiving little in return.

Many also fear that reprising the role of Merkel's junior partner could do further damage to the party's election prospects. The SPD fell to a record low score of 20.5 percent of the vote in September's general election after serving in her last government.

“For us, it’s too little" — Ellen Stock

“In effect, we’ve already had four years of coalition negotiations: that is, four years in a grand coalition,” Rainer Brinkmann, head of the local SPD office and a former Bundestag member, said on a recent snowy day in Detmold, a town of some 70,000 people.

“I’d hoped we would get a bit more [from the CDU/CSU] … personally, I don’t consider this result sufficient,” Brinkmann said over a cup of tea at the SPD office, where old party campaign posters line the walls.

The SPD got frustratingly few concessions from Merkel’s conservatives in the coalition blueprint as it stands, local party members said, especially on key issues like health insurance reform or tax increases for the wealthy. Some argued that the CDU/CSU can’t be trusted to actually implement everything it agrees to, leading them to believe a Merkel-led minority government would be a better option. And all worry that more time under Merkel could further marginalize the party and obscure its identity.

Ellen Stock, a member of the North Rhine-Westphalia state parliament from Detmold who will serve as a delegate at Sunday's conference, put it succinctly: “For us, it’s too little.”

Key state

Opinions like these matter: Of the 600 party members, leaders and elected officials who will serve as delegates at the Bonn conference, 144 hail from North Rhine-Westphalia. The state with the second-largest bloc of delegates, Lower Saxony, has just 81.

North Rhine-Westphalia, home to nearly a fifth of Germany’s population, has long had a strong SPD presence. Its tradition of heavy industry and manufacturing, especially in the Ruhr region, made it natural turf for the party's pro-labor message.

In recent years, though, the party has no longer been able to count on electoral success here: Merkel's CDU narrowly defeated the SPD in a regional election last year.

SPD leader Martin Schulz, who is himself from the state, recognizes how important North Rhine-Westphalia is to securing his party’s support for grand coalition talks. When he set off this week to make his pitch to the party faithful around Germany, he spent two nights meeting with delegates and party members in the cities of Dortmund and Düsseldorf.

Supporters of coalition talks with Merkel’s conservatives say they recognize the blueprint leaves plenty to be desired. However, Schulz and SPD parliamentary chief Andrea Nahles have argued the party has a responsibility to make a good-faith effort at forming a government — and that getting some of what the party wants is better than getting nothing at all.

“Of course there’s more we as Social Democrats want to accomplish,” said Tim Kähler, mayor of the North Rhine-Westphalia town of Herford. “But we also need to consider our election result — and as a party that won 20 percent in the federal election, we also need to make compromises.”

Any failure to seal a deal would likely lead to a new general election.

Alisa Löffler, a Dortmund city council member and SPD delegate who attended Schulz’s meeting there Monday, said she understands the party leader's argument for the SPD entering government. But she said the responsibility to govern lay primarily with Merkel's party, which came first in the election, and suggested a minority administration might be a better option.

“We need to make it clear that we’re not the ones with the responsibility,” she said. "Now is the time when [the CDU/CSU] needs to come up with alternatives."

Long road ahead

Even if the SPD votes in favor of starting coalition talks on Sunday, a new government is far from guaranteed. The negotiations could begin as early as next week but would likely take weeks to complete.

What’s more, if the two sides manage to agree on a coalition, the SPD would then put that deal to a vote open to its entire party membership.

Any failure to seal a deal would likely lead to a new general election. Merkel has expressed deep skepticism about a minority government and talks on forming an administration of conservatives, liberals and Greens collapsed in November.

SPD members opposed to a grand coalition said the blueprint as it stands gives the party only small pieces of what it wanted, rather than any major policy victories. The agreement calls for more equality in employer contributions to health care premiums but stops far short, for example, of implementing the SPD’s proposal for blanket government health insurance (known as Bürgerversicherung). And though the party campaigned last fall on a platform of social justice and equality, one of its top priorities — raising taxes on Germany’s high earners — did not make it into the coalition blueprint.

Thomas Kutschaty, a member of the state parliament and head of the SPD’s office in Essen, said he was disappointed by the lack of concrete policy victories for the party thus far.

“I was very much in favor of first holding exploratory talks,” he said. “But it was also important to me … that something especially good came out of it for the SPD.” That, he added, hasn’t happened.

“If we go into another grand coalition, what happens in four years?” — Ulrich Piechota

Plus, party members say they don't feel they can trust the CDU/CSU to hold up their end of the bargain. Some noted that, although the last grand coalition did raise the minimum wage, the increase wasn’t nearly as high as the SPD had wanted. And many mentioned a battle over the right of workers to return from part-time to full-time work — something that was included in the last coalition agreement four years ago but that the CDU/CSU ultimately stopped from being implemented.

The SPD needs to consider “whether we can trust them anymore,” said Fabian Erstfeld, a member of the SPD’s leadership board in Dortmund. “In the last grand coalition, there were several points that were agreed upon that weren’t implemented.”

At a meeting of local SPD members in Dortmund Wednesday night to discuss workers’ issues, the coalition talks were expected to be just one item on a longer agenda but ended up leading to more than an hour of heated discussion.

"We always talk about how we've lost our profile," said Simone Weiß, a young woman in the group. "We have great ideas, but we can't implement them with [a grand coalition]."

Sitting around a large wooden conference table, some party members became increasingly animated as they volleyed back and forth, conveying their frustration with what they saw as a range of bad options the SPD faces.

“There are some points where I say great, very nice,” said Ulrich Piechota, the group’s leader, holding up a copy of the coalition blueprint. “There are many others where I say: This can’t be the SPD.”

Underlying the disappointments over policy is a fear that the future of the party itself is at stake.

“If we go into another grand coalition, what happens in four years?” Piechota asked the group, voicing a worry that came up again and again in the meeting. “Will we stand here then with 15, 16, 17, 18 percent? With the same situation, we’ll keep disappearing.”