German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) yesterday braced for a backlash at key state polls over the German leader’s liberal refugee policy, while the right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) prepared to scoop up the protest vote from angry voters.
More than 12 million voters were electing three new regional parliaments for the southwestern states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, as well as eastern Saxony-Anhalt in the so-called Super Sunday polls.
The elections were the biggest since a record influx of refugees to Germany, and were largely billed as a referendum on Merkel’s decision to open the nation’s doors to people fleeing war.
Photo: Reuters
“These elections are very important ... as they will serve as a litmus test for the government’s disputed policy [on refugees],” Duesseldorf University political scientist Jens Walther said ahead of the polls.
Surveys in the run-up to the vote showed that support for the CDU and its junior coalition partner the Social Democratic Party (SPD) dropping, while the AfD was steadily gaining momentum and expected to record a surge in backing in all three states.
Merkel’s CDU was bracing for one of its poorest showings in years, particularly in its traditional stronghold of Baden-Wuerttemberg, with a poll published late on Thursday by ZDF public television showing support plummeting by 10 percentage points to 29 percent — putting it behind the Greens for the first time — while the AfD snatched 11 percent.
Guido Wolf, the CDU’s leading candidate in the southwest, said it was the “most difficult election campaign” the party has had to run.
In Rhineland-Palatinate, where the fortunes of the CDU had been rising, with the latest poll giving it 35 percent, the party is seen struggling to knock the Social Democratic Party, scoring 36 percent, off from the top of the list. The AfD was hoping to crack the 10 percent mark.
In Saxony-Anhalt, where the CDU still commands a large lead in the poll, with 32 percent, the AfD had a stunning 18 percent, at the heels of the second-placed Left Party, on 21 percent.
Merkel has been under intense pressure to change course and shut Germany’s doors after 1.1 million refugees — many of them Syrians — arrived in Europe’s biggest economy last year alone.
However, she has resolutely refused to impose a cap on arrivals, insisting instead on common European action that includes distributing refugees among the EU’s 28 member states.
As dissent grew over her stance, the AfD has capitalized on the darkening mood.
Founded in 2013 as an anti-euro party, the AfD has since morphed into one that sparked a storm in January after suggesting police might have to shoot at migrants at the borders.
Although the upstart party has seats in five regional parliaments and is represented in the European Parliament, it has so far made its biggest gains in former communist eastern states that still lag western Germany in jobs and prosperity.
However, its inroads into western states have sparked alarm in a Germany mindful of its Nazi past.
German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said: “We have a lot to lose if we deal carelessly with social stability and democracy.”
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.”
She has also shrugged them off as a temporary diversion.
“As we progress step by step on the question of refugees, our policies will show results and I am convinced that from there, the support that the AfD is enjoying right now will drop off,” she said.
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