Compared to other states across Germany, the north-eastern Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania hosts just a small proportion of migrants under a quota system based on states’ income and population – having taken in 25,000 asylum seekers past year.
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CDU could muster only a pitiful 19.2 per cent of the vote compared to the victorious AfD’s 21 per cent, leading to growing scepticism about Merkel’s ability to cling onto power in Germany after her party also lost three elections to the AfD in March. The arch-conservative CSU has demanded that Merkel put limits on the numbers of refugees.
Local AfD leader Leif-Erik Holm says it could even become the strongest party in the state legislature, but there’s no serious chance of it going into government.
Opinion polls suggest that it might even unseat the German leader’s party CDU from second place after the Social Democrats. In the last state election five years ago, they polled 35.6 and 23 percent respectively. It was the first of five regional ballots before a national election a year away.
“Clearly many voters are not aware or play down the fact that the AfD do not clearly distance themselves from right-wing extremists, in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania or anywhere else in the country”, he said. “However, I believe the decisions that have been made were right, and now we must continue working”.
The center-left Social Democrats, Merkel’s partners in Germany’s national government, remained the strongest party in Mecklenburg. That helped push the far-right National Democratic Party out of its last state legislature.
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. Still, New Year’s Eve robberies and sexual assaults blamed largely on foreigners, as well as two attacks in July carried out by asylum-seekers and claimed by the Islamic State group, have fed tensions.
Mrs Merkel has defended her policies but said she needs to “win back trust”.
She said the outcome of the state election stands for itself and added: “We must take note that people do not have sufficient confidence in our solution competences”.
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Merkel said the party now has to “work intensively on winning back trust, and I am firmly convinced that we can only do that by simply showing that we are solving the problems”.
