Berliners will go to the polls on Sunday to vote in a state parliamentary election that could deal another blow to Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats.

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The voting in Berlin, the last state election this year, will elect members to the 149-seat state parliament of Berlin.

Incumbent Berlin Mayor Michael Mueller of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) will lead to the polls his "grand coalition" of SPD and the local branch of Merkel’s CDU.

The most recent polls, published by ZDF and the Berliner Zeitung on Thursday, put the center-left SPD in the lead with 23-24 percent of votes.

Merkel’s center-right CDU is expected to poll 17-18 percent of votes, followed by the Greens with 15-17 percent and the far-left Linke with 14.5-15 percent.

The ruling Christian Democrats suffered a humiliating defeat in the chancellor’s home state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in early September when they were beaten into third place by the far-right Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD).

The anti-migrant AfD gained prominence across the country amid concerns over the federal government’s open-arms policy on refugees. It is expected to gain 13-14 percent in the Berlin legislature.

According to the Berliner Zeitung, Berlin’s SPD-CDU coalition looks set to lose its majority in the parliament. The next legislature will likely be a so-called red-red-green coalition of SPD, Linke and the Greens. </s> BERLIN (Reuters) - The three-year-old anti-immigration Alternative for Germany party has established a solid base among those Germans who demonstrate a political allegiance, a study showed on Wednesday.

The study by the German Institute for Economic Research and Humboldt University reinforces expectations that the anti-immigration party will make a strong showing in state elections next month in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern in the east.

The party established three years ago by eurosceptics as a platform to oppose euro zone bailouts has been boosted by the influx of a record number of migrants into Europe last year.

The AfD entered three new state parliaments in elections earlier this year and now has deputies in half of Germany's 16 state assemblies.

The study found that some 5 percent of Germans who have supported a political party over a long period expressed sympathy for the AfD. Five percent is the threshold required to enter local parliaments and the Bundestag national parliament.

This threshold is also interpreted by the authors of the study as a sign that the AfD has harnessed enough loyal supporters to secure its survival over the medium- and long-term.

The AfD also draws support from people who have never voted before and supporters of far-right parties like the National Democratic Party (NPD), the study found, which partially explains its double digit percentage share of the vote in state elections.

The study, which drew on interviews with more than 40,000 people who have supported a political party over a long period of time, election results, opinion polls and political surveys, also found that AfD supporters tend of be mostly male, under 30, unemployed, poorly educated and living in the east of Germany.

The AfD is polling at around 10 percent nationally. In March, it won 24 percent of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt, to become the second-biggest party in the state parliament. It also won nearly 15 percent in the prosperous southern region of Baden-Wuerttemberg and over 12 percent in Rhineland Palatinate. </s> People stage a protest against Anti-immigration party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Berlin Thomson Reuters BERLIN (Reuters) - Some 5,000 supporters of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) marched through Berlin on Sunday, but they were heavily outnumbered by anti-AfD demonstrations, including one from the city's club scene which blasted techno music across the capital.

The AfD's anti-immigration, anti-European Union and anti-Muslim messages helped it become the third largest party in the German Bundestag in last September's vote but it has had little impact on parliamentary debate since then.

The AfD demonstrators, bussed in from around Germany, marched from Berlin's main station, down the banks of the Spree river to the Brandenburg Gate near the German parliament.

But there were around 20,000 anti-AfD protesters - according to police estimates - most of them younger people, highlighting the divisions that have emerged in Germany since the 2015 refugee crisis.

"Our children, our country, our future: that is why we are here and we are the only party with this program," AfD leader Alexander Gauland, speaking to supporters at a rally near the Brandenburg Gate, where the march ended.

The party, founded as an anti-EU party in 2013, reinvented itself with an anti-immigration stance after Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to open the Germany's borders to more than a million refugees in 2015.

The AfD supporters, mostly older, waved German and AfD flags and carried placards demanding "Democracy not Merkelatorship."

Berliners responded with at least 13 registered counter-demonstrations. These included one by the city's club scene, which put on a techno music party, aiming to "Bass the AfD away" with music blasting from speakers on 20 public address trucks.

"We want to be loud enough to drown out the racist speeches," an activist named Rosa told RBB public television. The thudding techno beat echoed across the city center on Sunday afternoon.

Another group of anti-AfD protesters were on a boat on the Spree river holding up placards saying "You stink!"

The AfD is now the largest opposition party following the deal between Merkel's conservatives and the Social Democrats to renew their grand coalition.

As a result, the AfD has a host of powerful committee chairmanships, but has so far failed to capitalize on them.

Sunday's protests were broadly peaceful, with only one minor injury reported amid a heavy police presence. </s> BERLIN, Sept 4 (Reuters) - The anti-immigrant Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party is expected by polls to make huge gains in the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state election on Sunday, reflecting a growing discontent with Chancellor Angela Merkel and her open-door refugee policy.

The election, taking place exactly a year after Merkel's decision to open Germany's borders to hundreds of thousands of refugees will be followed by another key vote in Berlin in two weeks and national elections next September.

Voters already punished Merkel in three state elections in March, voting in droves for the AfD and rejecting Merkel's Christian Democrats.

If the national election were held next week, The AfD would win 12 percent of the vote, making it the third-largest party in Germany according to a new poll conducted by the Emnid institute for the Bild newspaper and published on Sunday.

That would catapult the party into the German parliament for the first time since its creation in 2013.

Merkel, mulling a bid for a fourth term as chancellor, made a last-minute campaign appearance on Saturday in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, her home state, warning against the politics of "angst" offered by AfD with its virulent anti-refugee stance.

"Every vote counts," she said. "This election is about the future of this state." She urged voters to look beyond divisive campaign slogans and consider the policies of the current centre-right coalition that had halved unemployment and pumped up tourism in the northeastern coastal state.

In an interview in the mass-circulation Bild newspaper, Merkel defended her decision to welcome so many migrants fleeing conflict in the Middle East, and denied that the influx had cut funding for the German public.

Merkel's approval ratings have sunk to a five-year low of 45 percent over the past year, but the chancellor said she would act no differently if faced with the same situation today.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere, a fellow Christian Democrat, rejected criticism from some in the CDU's Christian Social Union (CSU) sister party that Merkel's refugee policy was responsible for the rise of the AfD party.

The Emnid poll said 63 percent of Germans believed that too.

"I consider that preposterous," he told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper. "The refugee crisis is not the reason that far-right populist parties are now making gains here. That has more to do with the anxiety that some have about globalisation and modernity."

A poll released by German broadcaster ZDF on Friday showed the AfD capturing 22 percent of the vote in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which has 1.3 million eligible voters. The CDU was seen winning the same amount, while the Social Democrats, senior partner in the ruling coalition, was seen as likely to win 28 percent. (Editing by Greg Mahlich) </s> BERLIN — Supporters of the nationalist Alternative for Germany party marched through central Berlin to protest Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government Sunday and were kept away from a raft of counterdemonstrations by a heavy police presence.

Police said more than 5,000 people turned out for the demonstration organized by the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, known by its German acronym AfD. A variety of counterprotests against the far right attracted more than 25,000 people, they said.

The AfD event opened with German flags, placards such as “No Islam in Germany” and chants of “Merkel must go” outside Berlin’s central train station. The party’s supporters then marched to the landmark Brandenburg Gate. Opponents chanted “Nazis out” from the other side of the monument.

Some of the counterprotesters took to rafts on the Spree river, within sight of the train station. Groups organizing protests against AfD included artists and a coalition of Berlin music clubs hoping to “blow away” the party with loud techno beats.

About 2,000 police officers were in place to prevent clashes. The march concluded without significant unrest.

AfD won 12.6 percent of the vote to enter Germany’s national parliament last year on anti-immigrant and anti-establishment sentiment. It is now the largest of four opposition parties after the country’s two biggest parties agreed to continue a centrist “grand coalition” under Merkel earlier this year.

Its march Sunday, an unusual move for a German political party, was headlined “Germany’s Future.” An AfD regional leader, Andreas Kalbitz, proclaimed that “this is a signal” and argued that it shows “AfD is the center of society.”

In parliament, AfD’s novice lawmakers have sometimes struggled to grasp basic procedures and stood out with blunt attacks on minorities, particularly Muslims, who made up the majority of the more than 1 million asylum-seekers to enter Germany in 2015 and 2016. Recent polls have put the party’s support around the same level as in last year’s election.

Prominent AfD lawmaker Beatrix von Storch told Sunday’s demonstrators that “the vital question for us is: freedom or Islamization?”

Among the protesters was Silke Langmacker, an accountant, who carried a sign reading “Taxpayers First.”

“We are here to stop the uncontrolled influx into the German welfare system,” she said. “The refugees must return to Syria and rebuild their country there.”

Geir Moulson is an Associated Press writer. </s> Tensions run high as thousands descend on Cologne to protest against conference of far-right, anti-immigration party.

More than 50,000 demonstrators are expected to descend on Cologne on Saturday to protest the far-right populist, anti-immigration politics of the Alternative for Germany (AfD), as the party holds one of the most important conferences in its four-year history.

The AfD is hoping to enter parliament for the first time in Germany's general election on 24 September.

About 4,000 police officers have been deployed to avert clashes on the city's streets between anti-AfD protesters and party supporters. Scuffles broke out early on Saturday between police and anti-AfD demonstrators.

 

Around 600 AfD delegates are expected to attend the conference. The central city hotel, where the conference is being held, has made arrangements to allow staff members to stay overnight in the hotel to minimise problems with gaining entry to the venue.

OPINION: Angela Merkel is not the great progressive messiah

Hannelore Kraft, state premier of North-Rhine Westphalia, where the conference is taking place, and Green party leader Cem Ozdemir are due to speak at an anti-AfD rally on Saturday.

The two-day conference comes just days after AfD leader Frauke Petry ruled herself out of spearheading the party's campaign for the September election.

Her dramatic move brought to a head a long-running internal party power struggle, which pitted Petry against the party's right-wingers.

The AfD delegates attending the conference are likely to sign off on the party's election manifesto but will have to set aside months of tensions and turmoil to agree on a team to lead the campaign.

Petry has also placed a controversial motion before congress calling on the party to adopt a realpolitik approach, with the aim of transforming the AfD into a mainstream party open to coalition.

Founded in 2013 on a eurosceptic platform, the AfD has railed against Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to let in more than one million refugees to Germany since 2015.

In May 2016 AfD backed an election manifesto that says Islam is not compatible with the German constitution and the party also supported a call to ban minarets on mosques and the full-face veil.

AfD made huge gains in a state election in September, receiving about 21 percent of votes in the eastern Mecklenburg-Vorpommern region, beating Merkel's party to take second place.

Rising anti-refugee rhetoric has been matched by rising violence against refugees in Germany.

The interior minister said in February that Germany recorded more than 3,500 attacks in total against refugees, migrants and their shelters in 2016, amounting to nearly 10 acts of violence a day: a sharp rise on previous years.

But AfD's populairity has declined as the number of new refugee arrivals has dwindled, mainly due to border closures on the Balkan overland route and an EU deal with Turkey to stem the flow.

All of Germany's mainstream parties have ruled out working with the AfD should it clear the five-percent hurdle to representation in the election. 

 

Opinion polls show the AfD at between seven and 11 percent, a steep drop from the 15 percent support it drew only late last year.

Al Jazeera's Paul Brennan, reporting from Cologne, said it was questionnable whether the AfD would make it into parliament in the upcoming elections.

"In recent months they've had internal divisions, which have hamstrung them a little bit," said Brennan. "And the other thing is that, as they have grown, opposition against them has also grown."

OPINION: 'Control' is the new core of Germany's refugee policy

Brennan said that, while the party as a whole has generally tried to avoid controversy, many individual AfD members have publicly taken positions that many find offensive.

"The feeling among many critics is that individuals within the party are essentially neo-Nazis, and clearly in Germany that's a very sensitive issue," Brennan said.

Some scuffles had already occurred on Saturday between protesters and police - most of whom are in full riot gear - as tensions were high in the city, which is regarded as widely liberal.

"People are very angry that the AfD are here, they are determined to try to stop delegates reaching the hotel. It's going to be a very tense day," Brannan said. </s> A nationalist, anti-immigration party performed strongly in a German state election Sunday in the region where Chancellor Angela Merkel has her political base, overtaking her conservatives to take second place amid discontent with her migrant policies, projections indicated.

The three-year-old Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won 21 to 22 percent of votes in the election for the state legislature in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, according to projections for ARD and ZDF television based on exit polls and partial counting. They put support for Merkel's Christian Democrats between 19 and 20 percent, their worst result yet in the state.

The center-left Social Democrats, who led the outgoing state government, were the strongest party with about 30-percent support.

Economically weak Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in Germany's northeastern corner, is home to 1.6 million of the country's 80 million people and is a relative political lightweight. It is, however, the state where Merkel has her parliamentary constituency, and Sunday's regional vote was the first of five before a national election expected next September.

National AfD leader Frauke Petry celebrated "a blow to Angela Merkel." Local AfD leader Leif-Erik Holm told supporters: "Perhaps this is the beginning of the end of Angela Merkel's chancellorship today."

Merkel's refugee policies were a prominent issue in the campaign for Sunday's election, which came a year to the day after she decided to let migrants who were waiting in Hungary to travel to Germany — setting off the peak of last year's influx. Germany registered more than 1 million people as asylum-seekers last year.

New arrivals in Germany have slowed drastically this year, policies have been tightened and Mecklenburg is home to few foreigners. Still, New Year's Eve robberies and sexual assaults in Germany blamed largely on foreigners, as well as two attacks in July carried out by asylum-seekers and claimed by the Islamic State group, have fed tensions.

Merkel has stuck to her insistence that "we will manage" the refugee crisis, and has also said that "sometimes you have to endure such controversies."

"This result, and the strong performance of AfD, is bitter for many, for everyone in our party," said Peter Tauber, her Christian Democrats' general secretary.

He said the state government's positive record took a back seat for many voters, "because among a recognizable part, there was an explicit wish to voice displeasure and protest, and we saw that particularly strongly in the discussion about refugees."

Sunday's result could make it more difficult for Merkel to bury a festering dispute with the Christian Social Union, the Bavarian arm of her conservative bloc, which has long criticized her decision to open the borders and advocated an annual cap on migrants.

CSU general secretary Andreas Scheuer said that "we feel vindicated in our course."

Merkel has yet to say whether she will seek a fourth term next year, as is widely expected. While polls this year have shown her popularity slipping from stellar to merely solid, there is no obvious conservative alternative and her bloc is ahead nationally.

"She is, in people's perception, personally responsible for the border opening, and she has to deal with that," political science professor Karl-Rudolf Korte told ZDF television. "But she can deal with it — she has a year."

Mecklenburg was the only one of Germany's 16 states where the far-right National Democratic Party was represented in a state legislature, but it appeared to have lost its seats on Sunday. Its support dropped below the 5 percent needed to keep them, with many supporters apparently switching to AfD.

The state has been run for the past decade by the parties that currently run Germany. Popular Social Democratic governor Erwin Sellering has governed withMerkel's party as his junior partner. Both parties lost support compared with the last state election in 2011, when they polled 35.6 and 23 percent, respectively.

The opposition Left Party — once popular with protest voters — also lost support, slipping about six points to 12.5 percent. The left-leaning Greens were hovering around the 5 percent mark.

AfD is now represented in nine of Germany's 16 state legislatures and hopes to enter the national Parliament next year. Still, it fell well short Sunday of its aim of becoming the strongest party in Mecklenburg, and also didn't match the 24.3 percent support it won in another eastern state, Saxony-Anhalt, in March.

There's no realistic prospect at present of AfD going into government. Other parties won't deal with it.

The next regional election is Sept. 18 in Berlin, where local issues are likely to play a stronger role. </s> German Chancellor and CDU Party leader Angela Merkel casts her vote at a polling station on Sunday in Berlin during general elections (AFP photo)

BERLIN — Germans voted on Sunday in a general election expected to hand Chancellor Angela Merkel a fourth term while the hard-right nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD) Party was expected to make history by winning its first seats in parliament.

Europe’s most powerful woman appears all but assured of winning another term, matching the 16-year reign of her mentor Helmut Kohl.

Surveys suggest her conservative CDU/CSU alliance has a double-digit lead over its nearest rivals, the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Martin Schulz.

Polling stations in Europe’s top economy will close at 1600 GMT, with exit polls due out immediately afterwards.

With four other parties predicted to clear the 5-per cent threshold to enter the Bundestag, the highest number since the 1950s, it could take months of coalition wrangling before the next government takes shape.

But mainstream parties have already ruled out talking to the anti-Islam, anti-immigration AfD, which is polling at 11 to 13 per cent and could emerge as Germany’s third-strongest party.

Alarmed by the prospect of what Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel branded “real Nazis” entering the Bundestag for the first time since World War II, politicians used their final days of campaigning to urge voters to reject the AfD.

“This Alternative for Germany is no alternative. They are a shame for our nation,” former European Parliament chief Schulz told a rally on Friday.

The latest surveys put support for Merkel’s conservative block at 34-36 per cent, with the SPD trailing at 21-22 per cent — which would translate into a historic low for the party.

Despite bracing for a drubbing, Schulz was all smiles as he and his wife cast their ballot in his western hometown of Wuerselen.

Preliminary figures indicated that turnout was up compared to the 2013 election in major cities including Berlin, Munich and Hamburg.

Merkel, 63, whose campaign events were regularly disrupted by jeering AfD supporters, said at her final stump speech in the southern city of Munich that “the future of Germany will definitely not be built with whistles and hollers”.

Observers say a strong showing by the AfD, which has capitalised on anger over the influx of a million migrants and refugees since 2015, would hit Germany like a bombshell.

“If the AfD becomes the leading opposition party, they will challenge key themes,” said Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin. “It will very much change the tone of debate in parliament.”

Aside from the populist noise, the past two months of campaigning have been widely criticised as lacklustre, with few hot-button issues dividing the main contenders.

Commentators say Merkel’s reassuring message of stability and prosperity has resonated in greying Germany, where more than half of the 61 million voters are aged 52 or older.

Schulz, on the other hand, has struggled to gain traction with his calls for a more socially just Germany at a time when the economy is humming and employment is at a record low.

The SPD has also found it hard to shine after four years as the junior partner in Merkel’s left-right “grand coalition”, marked by broad agreement on major topics, from foreign policy to migration.

In the final stretch, the more outspoken Schulz told voters to reject Merkel’s “sleeping-pill politics” and vote against “another four years of stagnation and lethargy”.

Germany’s best-selling daily Bild at the weekend said 61-year-old Schulz found his voice as he neared the finish line, and praised him for “fighting until the end”.

“Germany doesn’t just need a chancellor. It also needs an opposition leader. Schulz has started to sound like one,” the newspaper wrote.

The CDU and the SPD have signalled they are not keen to continue their loveless marriage, and many rank-and-file SPD members believe the traditional working-class party would benefit from a stint in opposition to rekindle its fighting spirit.

This would leave the presumed winner Merkel in need of new coalition partners — possibly the liberal and pro-business Free Democrats, who are hoping for a comeback after crashing out of parliament four years ago.

Another potential partner would be the ecologist and left-leaning Greens Party, which, however, starkly differs with the FDP on issues from climate change to migration policy.

Pundits have pointed out that a significant number of voters remained undecided until the last minute, suggesting the final outcome could throw up some surprises depending on turnout.

In the western city of Frankfurt, 66-year-old Harald said he was still unsure who to vote for as he headed home from his night shift as a security guard in the leafy Westend suburb.

“I will make up my mind once I’m in the polling booth. You can forget about the AfD,” he told AFP. </s> BERLIN (Reuters) - A regional parliament has lifted the immunity of the best known politician in the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, opening the way for prosecutors to pursue possible perjury charges against her.

Frauke Petry, leader of the anti immigration party Alternative fuer Deutschland (AFD) before a press conference in Berlin, Germany, May 15, 2017. REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

Frauke Petry, who is the AfD’s co-chairwoman, has been dogged by allegations that she lied under oath to a committee of the Saxony parliament about how the party’s campaign for the 2014 election in the state was financed.

The ending of her immunity from prosecution adds to the right-wing party’s problems less than four weeks before a national election. Weakened by infighting, it has bled support over the last year as voters’ concerns about immigration have eased.

Prosecutors have pursued the case against Petry, who denies the allegations, for more than a year.

Her immunity as a member of the Saxony’s parliament ended at midnight, a spokesman for the assembly said.

A spokesman for prosecutors in the state capital Dresden said they would await written confirmation of that from the parliament’s president before any further proceedings could be agreed upon.

The AfD is polling between 7 and 10 percent in opinion surveys - well down from a high of 15.5 percent at the end of 2016 but still clearing the 5-percent threshold needed to enter the federal parliament in the Sept. 24 national election.

Petry cuts an increasingly isolated figure in the AfD, which she transformed from an anti-euro party at its founding in 2013 into a group that taps into voters’ concerns about migration.

The party soared in the polls after Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision in 2015 to open Germany’s borders to migrants fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond, of whom more than a million have since arrived.

At a party conference in April, Petry suffered a humiliating defeat when delegates refused to discuss her plan to shift the party towards the mainstream.
Voters head to the polls in Berlin, Germany, to elect members to the Abgeordnetenhaus of Berlin. Latest polling indicates the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) are expected to make strong gains.