Merkel: Winning trust priority after German election defeat

The nationalist, anti-immigration party Alternative for Germnany, AfD, has performed strongly in the state election Sunday in the region where Merkel has her political base, overtaking her conservatives to take second place amid discontent with her migrant policies.

While the SPD in Meckelenburg-West Pomerania could also form a coalition with the Left party, the CDU may very well be able to continue as the SPD’s junior partner in the state’s government, a role it has been playing for the last decade.

Speaking during a news conference at the G20 summit in China, Merkel said: “All of us now have to think about how we can earn their trust back, and of course I should be the first one to do that”.

“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”, he said.

The state vote was held exactly one year after Merkel opened German borders to a mass influx of Syrian refugees and other migrants that would swell arrivals in Europe’s top economy to one million asylum seekers in 2015. The CDU result is down 4% from the 23% it secured in 2011, with the Social Democrats also down, by 5%, compared to the 35.6% they received in 2011.

The AfD’s win was cheered by the leader of France’s far-right National Front party, Marine Le Pen, who posted on Twitter: “What was impossible yesterday has become possible: the patriots of AfD sweep up the party of Ms Merkel”.

In an interview with CNN Monday, AfD party leader Frauke Petry interpreted the party’s success in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern as a personal defeat for Merkel.

The opposition party’s win has been widely attributed to the German Chancellor’s controversial ‘open door’ refugee policy.

“The more the people who go to vote, the less the percentage won by some parties that, in my view, have no solution for problems and which are built mainly around a protest, often with hate”, she said.

But it’s won the vote in regional elections in her home state.

Another vote in Germany shows the growing strength of the far right, this time by defeating the nation’s major party on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s home turf. The AfD has been opposing the bill since the Alternative for Germany party’s inception three years ago.

Although Merkel already adjusted migrant policies over the past year, she can’t make a clean break from her overall approach because “that wouldn’t be credible”, political science professor Klaus Schroeder told N24 television.

In the aftermath of the loss, top CDU officials openly blamed Merkel’s refugee policy. But they will be seen as a key indicator of the public mood ahead of next year’s general elections.

Merkel vowed to boost security and improve counterterrorism measures, but she stood firm on Germany’s position of accepting almost all asylum seekers found to be legitimate refugees.