The Berlin state is the most important and most influential one in Germany.
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Frauke Petry, who has four children, said the German chancellor was unable to “see beyond her own lifespan” because she had no offspring of her own. The Green Party received 15.2 percent, down by 2.4 percentage points.
Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) were ousted from the state governing coalition with the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), just weeks after losing an election in another state.
Sounding particularly conciliatory, she added that if the wish of the German people was for the country not to be swamped with uncontrolled and unregulated migration “then that is exactly what I am fighting for”.
Voters turned to the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Sunday, which with 12.2 per cent of the vote will enter its tenth regional assembly of the country’s 16 states.
Mueller has rejected a new coalition with the CDU and was seen likely to team up with the ecologist Greens and the far-left Die Linke party, each of whom scored around 15 percent. They were founded in 2013 as an anti-euro party, now polls nationally at between 11 and 14 per cent.
The anti-immigrant and anti-EU AfD party came fifth, but its score, of nearly 14 percent, saw it enter the regional assembly for the first time and showed that it is becoming a force to be reckoned with ahead of federal elections due next year.
It was the fifth regional poll in a row showing losses for the Christian Democrats that Merkel will have to answer for, as voter angst over the arrival of one million refugees and migrants previous year continues to shake her once firm standing with the electorate.
The catchphrase she began using a year ago after her open-border policy helped trigger the arrival of hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers has been assailed by opponents as a glib expression of a policy they say hasn’t been thought through.
Due to heavy losses for CDU and SPD in the Berlin vote, the parties do not have enough support to continue a coalition government together.
Over at Berlin’s ruling SPD, which lost nearly seven points in its own historic election disaster, to finish on 21.6 per cent, the mood was brighter because it has options to remain in power.
On September 19th Mrs Merkel conceded that the Berlin results, like those in other recent elections, are “very bitter” and that her refugee policy bears much of the blame. What is acceptable in that eastern state, though-or in Berlin, the only state that contains both a formerly East and West German part-still horrifies many western Germans. Although Merkel’s conservatives came in second place, its lower numbers mean the end of their “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats SPD, which topped the election with 21.6% of the vote.
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Merkel is widely expected to seek a fourth term in next year’s election, though she still hasn’t declared her hand. The Free Democratic Party will return to the legislature with 6 percent.
