Germany’s anti-immigration party seen to benefit in polls
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GERMANS turned out in force to vote in three state elections yesterday, with the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party looking to profit from popular angst about Chancellor Angela Merkel’s welcome of more than a million migrants.
The election is the biggest test year of the German public response to the influx, totalling over a million last year alone and showing no sign of halting, of refugees and other migrants from the Middle East, Central Asia and Africa.
Merkel, who says Germany is a rich enough country to host desperate people and has a moral obligation to shelter those in danger, has staked her reputation on her management of the unprecedented influx, which has come to define her leadership.
Her conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) have been losing support to the AfD, which has profited from the growing unease.
A poor CDU performance would weaken Merkel just as she tries to push through a deal to resolve the crisis in EU negotiations with Turkey, the country from which most migrants depart by sea to reach the EU through Greece.
The AfD argues that Germans have been denied a choice over a policy that could define their country for generations, with Merkel ruling in a “grand coalition” that includes her party’s Socialist rivals.
“There is only one path, a Merkel unity path, and people want an alternative, they want a real opposition and we want to take on that task,” Andre Poggenburg, AfD leader in Saxony-Anhalt in former East Germany, said after voting.
Voter turnout there and in the two other states holding elections, which with a combined population of some 17 million account for more than a fifth of Germany’s 81 million, was well up from the last regional votes five years ago.
By midday yesterday, turnout was at 25 percent in Saxony-Anhalt, 5 percent higher than 2011, election officials said. In Rhineland-Palatinate, turnout — including postal votes — was at around 40 percent, up 9 percent from 2011. Local media in Baden-Wuerttemberg also reported higher voter numbers.
The results of exit polls for all three states are expected at around 6pm.
A failure to win at least two of the three would be a blow for Merkel just as she is trying to use her status as Europe’s most powerful leader to seal an EU deal with Turkey to stem the arrival of migrants.
Polls indicate that the CDU will remain the biggest party in Saxony-Anhalt.
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