(ANSA) - BELGRADE, SEP 14 - Today, more than thirteen million Germans will vote in local elections in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany's most populous state. Voting is also taking place in Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Bochum, and Bonn. Despite their purely local nature, the elections will undoubtedly have an impact on Friedrich Merz's federal government, which has its own polling station there. This will be the government's first real electoral test, and the chancellor is not holding back, stating yesterday at a meeting in Duesseldorf: "Tomorrow evening and Monday, I will carefully review the programme and then draw the necessary conclusions regarding the way we conduct election campaigns, the way we address issues, and the way we approach confrontations with our opponents," according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. (ANSA).