Anti-migrant populists made a strong showing in Sunday’s state polls, scoring ahead of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party as voters punished the German leader over her liberal refugee policy.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) clinched about 21 percent in its first bid for seats in the regional parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Vorpommern, results showed after most ballots were counted.
Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) garnered just 19 percent in its worst ever score in the northeastern state, while the Social Democrats maintained top place with about 30 percent.
AfD’s lead candidate Leif-Erik Holm called it a “proud result for a young party,” as the populists secured seats on the opposition benches of the ninth out of 16 regional parliaments with Sunday’s showing.
“The icing on the cake is that we have left Merkel’s CDU behind us... maybe that is the beginning of the end of Merkel’s time as chancellor,” Holm said.
Although the former Communist state is Germany’s poorest and least populous, it carries a symbolic meaning as it is home to Merkel’s constituency, Stralsund.
Together with Berlin’s elections in two weeks, Sunday’s polls were a key test ahead of general elections next year, when Merkel’s decision exactly a year ago to let in tens of thousands of Syrian and other refugees is expected to be a key point of contention.
Although she won praise at first, the optimism has given way to fears over how Europe’s biggest economy will manage to integrate the million people who arrived last year alone.
Merkel’s decision has left her increasingly isolated in Europe and exposed her to heavy criticism at home, including from her own conservative allies.
CDU General Secretary Peter Tauber said Sunday’s results were “bitter,” acknowledging that voters “wanted to send a signal of protest, as we had noticed in discussions about refugees.”
In the sprawling farming and coastal state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where economic regeneration and jobs used to be residents’ top concerns, the issue of refugees and integration has become the deciding factor for one in two voters.
“There was only one issue, that is, and was, refugee policy,” CDU candidate Lorenz Caffier said.
A pensioner and former teacher who declined to be named said he picked the AfD because of the “question over asylum seekers.”
“A million refugees have come here. There is money for them, but no money to bring pensions in the east to the same levels as those of the west,” he said, referring to the lower retirement payments that residents of former Communist states receive compared with those in the west.
Compared with other parts of Germany, the northeastern state hosts just a small proportion of refugees under a quota system based on states’ income and population — having taken in 25,000 asylum seekers last year.
Most of them have already decided to abandon the state, preferring to head “where there are jobs, people and shops,” CDU candidate Frieder Weinhold said.
However, the “migration policy has sparked a feeling of insecurity among the people,” he said.
After a series of attacks by asylum seekers in July — including two claimed by the Islamic State group — the mood has also darkened.
The AfD, which was founded in 2013, has continued its meteoric rise, even though leading members of the party have sparked outrage over insulting remarks, including one disparaging soccer player Jerome Boateng, of mixed German and Ghanaian descent, as the neighbor no German wants.
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