Voters turned to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), which with 12.9 per cent of the vote will enter its 10th regional assembly among the country’s 16 states. The result was the party’s worst ever performance in Berlin.
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Center-left Social Democrats (SPD), Merkel’s coalition partner came out on the top with 21.6 percent of all votes, followed by CDU, which secured 17.5 percent, followed by Din Linke (15.7 percent) and the Greens (15.1 percent).
Petry suggested that Alternative for Germany would be prepared to take on government responsibility from 2021 if it gets sufficient backing from voters.
Sunday was not a happy day for the Chancellor of Germany’s political party.
Many voters drifted further to the left and right, with the Left Party climbing 3.9 points to 15.6 percent.
Ahead of the election the city’s mayor said that double-digit support for the party, “would be seen around the world as a sign of the return of the rightwing and the Nazis in Germany”.
Merkel told a press conference following a fresh debacle for the CDU in Sunday’s Berlin city state that “not everything had been done properly” following her controversial decision a year ago to open her nation’s borders to allow refugees stranded in Hungary to travel to Germany.
“We have achieved a great result”, said AfD deputy leader Beatrix von Storch.
Merkel said her party would reach out to disaffected voters, including those who had backed AfD in recent elections due to fears about the impact that migrants will have on the country.
It will nearly certainly be forced out of the Berlin state Government, where it was the junior coalition partner with the SPD, and Muller is expected to seek a new coalition with the Greens and Left Party.
During his campaign, Berlin Mayor and Social Democrat Michael Mueller compared a strong AfD result to a resurgence of Nazism in Germany.
Jewish leaders in the country have warned against the rise of the party which has already had a series of electoral successes this year, including earlier this month in the the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
A former council president, Charlotte Knobloch, who heads the Jewish Community of Munich and Upper Bavaria, on Sunday urged Germany’s “democratic parties to make good use of the time between now and the next elections in 2017 to stop the Nazi renaissance”.
A year before a federal election, the result will raise pressure on Ms Merkel and deepen divisions within her conservative camp.
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In a speech reported by The Guardian, she said: “For some time, we didn’t have enough control [.] No one wants a repeat of last year’s situation, including me”.
