Voters are set to hit the polls in Germany’s most populous state of North Rhine Westphalia on Sunday in a close race between the state’s governing conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD). Some 13 million people are eligible to vote in the industrial western state, often seen as a bellwether for national polls, with 786,000 first-time voters. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, from the SPD, will be watching the polls carefully after his party received a drubbing in another state poll just last weekend. The Christian Democrats (CDU) are currently at the helm of a coalition alongside the pr…