She’s the head of Alternative for Germany, a right-wing nationalist party, and the group delivered a big upset to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party in regional elections over the weekend.
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The populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), which had sparked outrage by suggesting police may have to shoot at migrants to stop them entering the country, recorded double-digit support in the first elections they have stood for in all three regions.
Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union lost two states it had hoped to win back from center-left incumbents.
The AfD’s right-populist platform has opposed Merkel’s open-arm policy toward refugees from Arab countries such as Syria and Iraq, picking up on anxieties among the general population about the almost 1 million who have sought asylum in Germany over the past year.
Asked how she will prepare for the election results, Dr Merkel told a rally last Saturday: “I will cross my fingers”.
Germany’s parties were holding meetings Monday to digest the outcome, which featured tricky results for most established political forces.
However, the majority of people questioned also suspected that the AfD was a protest party which was good at identifying problems but would not provide viable solutions over the long term.
Describing the result as a “bad day for the CDU [Christian Democrats]”, she admitted that her policies had so far brought “no lasting solution” to the refugee crisis. The SPD won 37.5 percent of the vote to the CDU’s 33 percent, the ZDF exit poll indicated.
The projections also showed the Alternative for Germany winning enough support to enter into the legislatures of both of the western states, a development that raises its presence at the regional level to representation in half of the country’s 16 states.
Still, there was no sign from Merkel’s own party of a shift, and government spokesman Steffen Seibert said Germany will continue to “pursue its refugee policy at home and overseas”.
Merkel appeared unmoved, disputing Seehofer’s contention that the conservative bloc faces an “existential” threat from AfD’s rise and reiterating that she can’t go into negotiations with Turkey on stemming the migrant flow with a national refugee limit.
In Saxony-Anhalt, a poor, eastern state where the CDU and the Social Democrats govern together, that coalition looked set to remain in office, but the exit polls showed AfD won about 22 percent of the vote.
“Merkel will now have to live with the accusation that she has allowed the AfD to establish itself to the right of the CDU”.
Merkel acknowledged Monday that the refugee issue dominated three state elections and that many voters felt there is no satisfactory solution yet. In Rhineland-Palatinate, the current Social Democrat state premier, Malu Dreyer, is closely followed in the polls by conservative candidate Julia Klöckner who is seen as Merkel’s successor.
With the federal election just 18 months away, Germans are now asking what will Angela Merkel do?
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The CDU was defeated in two of the three states in regional elections, and scored a historic low 27 percent in its stronghold Baden-Wuerttemberg where it came in second place after the Greens.
