The region is sparsely populated, but the vote was symbolically significant because Merkel has her parliamentary constituency there and it was the first of five regional ballots before a national election expected next September. It was held exactly a year after she chose to let in migrants stuck in Hungary, triggering the peak of last year’s influx.
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While Merkel’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) garnered its worst ever score in elections to the parliament in state capital Schwerin, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) maintained top place with over 30 percent.
In a stinging defeat for Merkel in her home district one year ahead of federal elections, the upstart Alternative for Germany (AfD) party won 21.4 percent of the vote in their first election in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern by campaigning hard against the chancellor’s policies on refugees.
Merkel’s conservative Bavarian allies the CSU renewed their demands for tougher policies on migrants.
In a rare, self-critical reflection over a state election defeat, Merkel insisted three times in the space of a four-minute statement in China that her decision to open the gate for refugees a year ago was right and would not be changed.
“(The result was) a blow to the chancellor personally and sharpens the question over whether she will lead her party into next year’s general election”, Alastair Newton, co-founder and director of Alavan Business Advisory, said in a note Sunday.
The chancellor, who was attending a G20 summit in China, once again strongly defended her policy towards the refugee crisis on Monday, saying, “I consider the fundamental decisions as right”. They just didnt explain their policies..
“We have wasted a great deal of time with unnecessary arguments”, he said, arguing that Merkel had been guilty of “simply repeating “we will manage it” without doing it as well”. Her critics say the administration has not made sufficient contribution to efforts for ending the crises in Syria and Iraq, which are among the main causes of the refugee influx in Europe. “It is not just ignorance”.
Petry, whose party has no prospect of going into government in the foreseeable future, complained that its rivals “still think they can label AfD as an undemocratic party”. That helped push the far-right National Democratic Party out of its last state legislature.
The AfD has succeeded by stirring resentment against minorities and offering “slogans rather than solutions”, said the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster.
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The AfD’s rise mirrors success enjoyed by other anti-immigration parties across Europe, with France’s Front National (FN) riding high in the polls and a far-right populist eyeing the presidency in Austria in elections on October 2.
