The AfD was second – a great success for the right-wing party, which was running in provincial elections for the first time. The elections took place in the small coastal state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern where AfD beat Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats by a narrow margin.
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“The strong performance of AfD is bitter for many, for everyone in our party”.
Merkel’s refugee policies were a prominent issue in the campaign for Sunday’s election, which came a year to the day after she chose to let in migrants who were waiting in Hungary to travel to Germany – setting off the peak of last year’s influx.
The preliminary results indicate the Social Democratic Party won 30.6%, Alternative für Deutschland took 20.8% and the Christian Democratic Union got 19%.
Sunday’s election is also seen as a test for next year’s general election, as protesting voters are leaving the mainstream parties to vote for AfD.
The Chancellor, largely supported by the German political establishment, insists that this policy is right for Germany and must continue.
“We made a decision to fulfill our humanitarian tasks”, she told reporters at a news conference, according to a translator.
It is particularly doing well in eastern German regions, which are generally poorer, more sceptical of mainstream parties and more critical of immigration, although Mecklenburg-Vorpommern has taken in only around 25,000 asylum seekers out of the million that arrived to the country a year ago. “Refusing humanitarian support, that would be something I wouldn’t want to do and I wouldn’t recommend this to Germany”. But we need controlled borders. “Berlin needs to change tack”.
“A million refugees have come here”.
Although she won praise at first, the mood has since turned, giving way to fears over how Europe’s biggest economy will manage to integrate the million people who arrived a year ago alone.
“I am very unsatisfied with the outcome of the election”, Merkel told reporters on the sidelines of the G20 summit in China.
She added that “the issue of integration will play a huge role in that, and the question of the repatriation of refugees who have no residence permit here”.
The leader of the state of Bavaria warned German conservatives on Tuesday that they faced an “extremely threatening” situation after a “disastrous” state election on Sunday which he blamed squarely on Angela Merkel’s open-door migrant policy.
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Politico’s senior European Union correspondent, Ryan Heath, said analysts believe Merkel still has an overwhelming likelihood of winning the national elections in 2017. A long standing coalition between SPD and the CDU as a junior partner remains in place since 2005.
