THE most successful political group in the Federal Republic of Germany has arguably been the Free Democratic Party (FDP). Since 1949, it has been in government—always as junior partner—more than either of the two main parties, the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD). The FDP’s classical-liberal values of individual freedom, limited government and rule of law inspired Germany’s post-war constitution. The party also fielded two respected presidents, Theodor Heuss and Walter Scheel, as well as Germany’s most influential foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher. In 2009, in the most recent federal election, the party got its best result ever, with 14.6% of votes.

How it has fallen. The party is now so low in the polls that it risks dropping below the 5% threshold required to enter the state parliament in Lower Saxony, which votes on January 20th, and even the Bundestag in September’s federal election (see chart). Its ejection would mean not only the silencing of a liberal voice in these chambers but also the end of the FDP’s traditional role as kingmaker. And that in turn could determine who will lead Germany as chancellor. The election in Lower Saxony is being seen as a test case for the national vote in the autumn. In Hanover, a CDU premier, David McAllister, governs in a coalition with the FDP. He is popular and easily leads the SPD and the Green party in the opinion polls. Nonetheless, if the FDP is thrown out, the arithmetical result may be that a coalition between the SPD and Greens prevails over the CDU and forms the state government. If so, the SPD’s Stephan Weil, a wonkish mayor of Hanover, would become the state’s premier. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor and boss of the CDU, worries that something similar could happen in Berlin. Her party and its Bavarian sister, the Christian Social Union (CSU), have a comfortable lead in the national polls over both the SPD and the Greens. She is much more popular than the SPD’s candidate for chancellor, Peer Steinbrück, whose campaign has distinguished itself through a series of damaging blunders. But without the FDP in parliament, the SPD and Greens together could yet win, unless Mrs Merkel can persuade either of these centre-left parties to become her junior partner instead. Not only the FDP but everybody on the centre-right wants to avoid that chaos by resuscitating the FDP. But how? At an FDP gathering in Stuttgart on January 6th, the internal bickering and panic became public. Dirk Niebel, the federal minister of development, likened the FDP to Germany’s football team if a striker were forced to be goalkeeper, another a defender, and the goalie became midfielder.

This was code for blaming Philipp Rösler (pictured above with Mrs Merkel), the party chairman and economics minister. Born in Vietnam and German by adoption, Mr Rösler is bright but wooden, and inadvertently made Mr Niebel’s case by giving a sophisticated but impenetrable speech. If the FDP gets less than 5% in Lower Saxony, which happens to be Mr Rösler’s home state, he will surely have to go.

The closest thing to a “striker” the FDP has is Christian Lindner. Only 34, Mr Lindner leads the FDP in North-Rhine Westphalia, the most populous state, and is credited with rescuing the party in local elections there last year. But Mr Lindner is not currently a member of the Bundestag. And though talented, he is probably too young, says Volker Kronenberg at the University of Bonn, who was Mr Lindner’s politics professor. The more obvious replacement for Mr Rösler is Rainer Brüderle, the FDP’s parliamentary leader. Mr Brüderle, jovial and 67, could get sufficiently aggressive in this year’s campaign but would not block Mr Lindner’s future advancement, goes the thinking.

But the FDP’s failures are caused by more than personnel choices. As Hermann Otto Solms, a party elder and vice-president of parliament, argues, the party should have capitalised on its good showing in 2009 to force the coalition partners, the CDU and CSU, to enact more of its programme, above all tax reform. Instead, the FDP was outmanoeuvred by the Machiavellian Mrs Merkel. Its name is now attached to reforms—such as a cut in the value-added tax for hoteliers—that voters regard as small-beer at best or as pandering to special interests at worst.

If the FDP reminds liberal voters of its principles, it will survive in parliament, says Mr Solms. That includes occasionally baring its teeth at the CDU, he adds, by resisting the “social-democratisation” of German society and even centre-right politics. Mrs Merkel has been happy to poach leftist ideas from the SPD and the Greens, from contemplating a minimum wage and higher government pensions to intervening massively in the energy industry. Only the FDP today makes the liberal case for individual freedom and responsibility, says Mr Solms.

That is a difficult stance in Germany, where many voters are anxious about the euro and crave security and a bigger role for government, rather than more responsibility. The German press, which, according to Siegfried Weischenberg at the University of Hamburg, disproportionately favours the Greens and the SPD, does not make the FDP’s task easier.

Nonetheless, the FDP still has a chance of staying in the Bundestag. Jackson Janes, a Germany watcher at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC, thinks 10% of German voters are philosophically liberal. If the FDP were forced out of Lower Saxony’s parliament, he says, the shock would be such that even disenchanted supporters would mobilise in September.