Merkel’s Poll Disaster...

Local Editor

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling conservatives have suffered humiliating losses to the anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland [AfD] party in three key state elections seen as a referendum on her "open door" refugee policy which allowed more than a million migrants to enter the country last year.

The real shock of Sunday night's polling was the scale of AfD's gains, which easily entered all three legislatures.

The three-year-old party [AfD] - which has campaigned against Mrs Merkel's open-borders approach - won 15.1% of the vote in Baden-Wuerttemberg, official results showed.

Initial opinion survey results showed that a large percentage of AfD votes came from disgruntled former supporters of her ruling Christian Democrats' Union [CDU].

Less than three years since its founding, the party which says it wants to put the Fatherland back in Germany now holds parliamentary seats in eight of Germany's 16 federal states. In two other state elections in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Pomerania this autumn, the party is also almost certain to enter both parliaments.

With a full German general election in the autumn next year, the AfD at the moment would seem well placed to enter Berlin's national Bundestag parliament by the end of 2017. All other parties have ruled out the idea of a coalition with the AfD, so the arithmetic of Teutonic politics dictates that for the foreseeable future Germany may be run by a succession of grand coalition governments made up of its two main parties.

Angela Merkel claims that she is on the way to solving Europe's worst refugee crisis since the Second World War. Much depends on whether she can broker a convincing deal with Turkey and her European allies later this week.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team