Pivoting to domestic politics while attending the Group of 20 summit in China, Merkel gave a defiant impression and “was full of plans how to solve this crisis” when she got on a conference call with other leaders of her Christian Democratic Union in Berlin on Monday, Elmar Brok, a senior CDU member, said in a Bloomberg Television interview.
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An AfD candidate in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern said that he was proud of the party’s result, and predicted the end of the Chancellor’s reign.
The Secretary-General of the CSU, Andreas Scheuer, said: “We need a cap on refugee numbers, expedited repatriation processes, an expansion of the list of nations deemed to be safe countries of origin, and better integration measures”, adding that she felt the rightwing populist, AfD had exploited Merkel’s dwindling support.
This is humiliating for Angela Merkel – not least because this was on home turf.
AfD leader Frauke Petry released a video Friday urging voters to “make history not only in the state-region, but the whole of Germany” by backing the party massively in the polls.
According to a Der Spiegel magazine report, Merkel wanted to announce her intention of running for a fourth term this year but put that on hold due to resistance from her Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union. After a series of attacks by asylum seekers, the mood in Germany has darkened.
Economically weak Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in Germany’s north-eastern corner, is home to 1.6 million of the country’s 80 million people and is a relative political lightweight.
It’s believed the region’s lurch to the right is a result of rising anti-refugee sentiment in the country that introduced an open-door immigration policy previous year. “The main reason is the question over asylum-seekers”, a pensioner and former teacher who declined to be named told AFP news agency.
New migrant arrivals in Germany have slowed drastically this year after spiking following Merkel’s September 4, 2015 decision to allow in migrants who had piled up in Hungary.
Experts say the results don’t mean there’s a looming disaster for Merkel in next year’s election if she chooses to run – the AfD would likely have trouble forming a coalition with more traditional political parties – but they do signal some concerns for Merkel.
Merkel said she was “deeply dissatisfied with the outcome of the election”, conceding that campaigning had been dominated by the influx of one million asylum seekers to Germany previous year.
But the “migration policy has sparked a feeling of insecurity among the people”, he said.
In Saxony-Anhalt election, CDU won 30 seats compared to 42 in the previous, whereas AfD became the second largest party with 24 seats and this was their first-time contesting.
It was beaten by a far-right party that was founded in 2013.
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“We have to recognize that many people at the moment don’t have sufficient trust in our ability to resolve the issue, even though we’ve made a lot of progress”, Merkel said.
