The dismal result for Merkel’s party amounted to a resounding success for the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party only founded three years ago, but which has been gaining in popularity since the migrant crisis enveloped the European Union in 2015.
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More than 12 million people may vote in parliamentary elections in three states: Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate in the southwest, and Saxony-Anhalt in the east.
The far-right, xenophobic Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) made significant ground in German state elections Sunday, as voters punished German Chancellor Angela Merkel for her policies on Europe’s refugee crisis.
Mar 14, 2016- The party of German Chancellor Angela Merkel has suffered defeats in two of three states holding regional elections, exit polls suggest. It will also enter Parliament for the first time in Rhineland Palatinate and Baden-Württemberg.
Germany took in 1.1 million migrants fleeing the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere last year and is expecting hundreds of thousands more to arrive this year.
In Baden-Wuerttemberg the Greens for the first time became the strongest party there with around 31 percent of the vote.
The elections have been seen as a test of Mrs Merkel’s refugee policy.
“This result has shown a lot of protest voters have expressed discontent on the biggest issue – the refugee topic – so all of the established parties that stood for election in the three states need to draw the conclusion “we have understood” he said on German radio Deutschlandfunk.
Mrs Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union looked set to finish up to 5% behind Green governor Winfried Kretschmann in Baden-Wuerttemberg and Social Democrat governor Malu Dreyer in Rhineland-Palatinate. The German media were quick to dub the outcome of the elections a “day of horror for Merkel” and “Black Sunday for the CDU”.
Merkel herself described the AfD as a “party that does not bring society together and offers no appropriate solutions to problems, but only stokes prejudices and divisions”.
“The Federal Government of Germany intends to continue to follow the course of its refugee policy, at home and overseas”, government spokesman Steffen Seibert said on Monday.
Frauke Petry, leader of the AfD, labelled the elections a “good day for democracy”.
Reiner Haseloff, leader of the CDU in Saxony-Anhalt, blamed the chancellor for the party’s losses.
“Ms Merkel’s refugee policy was supported by the majority of voters, ” Gero Neugebauer, a political scientist at Berlin’s Free University, said.
The AfD is already represented in five of Germany’s 16 regional parliaments and campaigns with such slogans as “Secure the borders” and “Stop the asylum chaos”, the BBC reported.
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“The central reason (for the losses) is refugee policy – there is no point in talking past it”, Bavarian governor Horst Seehofer, Merkel’s most prominent internal critic of recent months, said Monday.
