The elections took place in the small coastal state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern where AfD beat Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats by a narrow margin. Her Christian Democratic Union managed to attract only 19 percent of the votes, making it one of the party’s worst regional election results ever.
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The state vote was held exactly one year after Merkel opened German borders to a mass influx of mainly Syrian refugees stranded in Hungary.
The significant issues of integration and the deportation of failed asylum seekers were mentioned by Ms. Merkel who has turned more hard line on the migrant crisis in recent weeks claiming that she does not want to see a repeat of previous year.
Critics of her decision to keep Germany’s borders open, which resulted in the arrival of 1.1 million migrants in 2015, say she is to blame for creating a security threat in the country. “It’s not what people want”. “Maybe that is the beginning of the end of Merkel’s time as chancellor”.
Top candidate Leif-Erik Holm (C) of the anti-immigrant Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party receives his ballot paper in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state election in Klein Trebbow, Germany, September 4, 2016.
In Tuesday’s edition of the daily newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, Horst Seehofer, the Bavarian state premier and leader of the Christian Social Union (CSU), said Sunday’s “disastrous” election result was a effect of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s refugee policy. Some CSU members have renewed calls for Merkel to put a limit on the number of migrants entering Germany.
Carsten Brzeski, chief economist at ING-DiBa, said in a note on Monday that the latest election was “another shot across the bow for the national government and Chancellor Angela Merkel”.
Thomas Jaeger, political scientist at Cologne University, told Reuters that Merkel was down but far from out.
“This was a dark day for Merkel”, said Jaeger. “Everyone knows that she lost this election”.
The German leader’s open-door refugee policy was a key issue in Sunday’s state election.
“This result, and the strong performance of AfD, is bitter for many, for everyone in our party”, said Peter Tauber, her Christian Democrats’ general secretary.
The region is sparsely populated, but the vote was symbolically significant because Merkel’s parliamentary constituency is there.
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After a series of terrorist attacks in July, Merkel refused to back down on her immigration policy, which she has termed a moral responsibility, especially to people fleeing the horror of civil war in Syria.
