* Merkel's conservatives eye strongest result since 1990
* Chancellor has chance of absolute majority
* Slim majority could make third term difficult
By Stephen Brown and Noah Barkin
BERLIN, Sept 22 (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel won a landslide personal victory in a German election on Sunday, putting her within reach of the first absolute majority in parliament in half a century, a ringing endorsement of her steady leadership in the euro crisis.
Partial results put her conservative bloc - the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) -- on 42.5 percent, which if confirmed would be their strongest score since 1990, the year of German unification.
The second biggest German party, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), suffered their second-worst result since World War Two, polling just 26.4 percent, after a gaffe-filled campaign led by former finance minister Peer Steinbrueck.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/22/germany-election-idUSL5N0HI01R20130922