Germany's southern state of Bavaria started voting on Sunday to shuffle the local parliament, known as the Landtag.

The Christian Social Union (CSU), which has long governed the economically-strong state in the post-war period, is polled to suffer a serious setback and lose its majority.

The latest survey showed the conservative party will get 34 percent of the votes, a historic low and a sharp decline from the 47.7 percent it got in 2013.

The CSU's losses will likely give way to the ecologically minded and pro-immigration Greens, who have a supporting rate of 19 percent, and the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), which is forecast to win roughly 10 percent of the votes, according to the poll made by Infratest Dimap.

The regional Free Voters party is projected to get 10 percent of the votes.

If the polls are accurate, it would be fairly difficult to form a stable coalition government in Bavaria, since the CSU has greatly shifted its policies to the right even though it has ruled out cooperation with the AfD.

Local media said the probable combination of CSU and left-leaning Greens in the government will lead to a more tricky situation.

The CSU has taken a hard line on migration issues, after German Chancellor Angela Merkel's open-door policy of 2015.

The German government nearly collapsed this year when the CSU, at the federal level, insisted on a stricter plan to turn away refugees at the border after clashing with its sister party, Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU).

(Top image: Markus Soeder, center, Bavaria's State Premier and top candidate of the conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) party for the regional elections in Bavaria, casts his vote, with his wife Karin Soeder by his side, in Nuremberg, southern Germany, October 14, 2018. /VCG Photo )