Voting began on Sunday in the German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where polls project the anti-immigrant Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party will make huge gains amid 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.

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is a small coastal state in northeastern Germany with just 1.3 million eligible voters, but losses there would be humiliating for Merkel, who has her own electoral district in the state.

The AfD, founded two years after the last election in the state, is expected to capture 22 percent of the vote, the same as Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), junior partner in the state’s ruling coalition, according to a poll by broadcaster ZDF.

The Social Democrats, senior partners in the state’s ruling coalition, are expected to win 28 percent of the vote, compared with 35.6 percent in the last state-wide election in 2011.

The AfD is also making gains nationwide, a new poll showed Sunday. 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 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, 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 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 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.” </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> 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> 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> A year from now, Germany will be in the final stages of a general election that will shape European politics for the rest of this decade and beyond. With 12 months still to go, the question of whether Angela Merkel will lead her centre-right CDU party into that election is the great unknown. Mrs Merkel has been chancellor for 11 years and is nearing the end of her third term. She is globally respected and generally popular with voters, but she cannot go on forever. Her handling of the refugee question has shaken up German politics and damaged (though in some quarters burnished) her mystique, causing speculation that the Merkel era may be nearing its end.

The weekend elections in Germany’s most north-eastern region, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, were the latest lightning-rod for post-Merkel speculation, given a special twist by the fact that the chancellor herself sits for the region. The results on Sunday were unquestionably bad for the CDU, whose vote fell by 4% from 23% to 19%, slipping into third place behind the centre-left SPD on 31% and the anti-migrant AfD on 21%. The region will continue to be governed by a “grand coalition” of SPD and CDU, similar to the one that Mrs Merkel leads at federal level. Yet the setback has triggered the once unmentionable subject of the CDU adopting a new leader in time for the general election.

Objectively, there is not much basis for such speculation. The 4% fall in the CDU share in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern does not, on its own, justify real panic. All major parties lost vote share on Sunday. The AfD’s genuinely spectacular success has also been drawn from all parties, including from the Left party and the SPD. More enduringly, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern is not typical of Germany as a whole. It is one of the poorest regions in the country and formerly part of communist East Germany. Markedly the strongest vote for the AfD, moreover, was in the extreme east, the poorest part of all. It has been a long time since the former DDR was the CDU stronghold that it was in the aftermath of German reunification.

It is of course true that the results in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern illustrate political trends that can be seen all over Europe, including Germany. Anti-migrant feeling has risen everywhere, as has racial tension. Dissatisfaction with national governments is widespread and hostility to the European Union has grown. But these trends take different and nuanced forms in each country and in each region of each country. Mrs Merkel is admired as well as disliked for her handling of the migrant situation. It is misleading to see everything in European domestic politics through the single prism of Brexit – or any other preoccupation.

Nevertheless there is absolutely no doubt that this result will be weighed alongside those in the upcoming regional contests in Lower Saxony and Berlin to form a general view of Mrs Merkel’s standing as the general election draws nearer. Nor is there much doubt that a politician who has dominated her country for so long will eventually and rightly come under pressure from a new generation. Mrs Merkel’s weaknesses are under the microscope at the moment. Yet the instinct for stability is strong in Germany and it would be foolish not to remember Mrs Merkel’s great strengths too, especially when there is little evidence yet that a different centre-right leader would win more support. </s> (CNN) Could the success of a far-right party in Germany's local elections be a harbinger of things to come?

The Sunday contest was viewed by many as a referendum on Chancellor Angela Merkel's immigration policy, and her party suffered a significant defeat on her home turf.

Merkel admitted Monday that decisions on immigration played a role in the result, but insisted that she has made the right ones.

Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, defeated the Christian Democratic Union -- Merkel's party -- in local elections in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, coming in second behind the Social Democratic Party, according to exit polls.

AfD was only formally founded in April 2013, yet it defeated the CDU in the German chancellor's home state.

Although AfD has performed strongly in several other regional elections, most notably coming in second with 24% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt in March, it's an unprecedented moment in modern German politics that the CDU is set to finish behind a party so far to its right on most issues.

The preliminary results indicate the Social Democratic Party won 30.6%, Alternative für Deutschland took 20.8% and the Christian Democratic Union got 19%.

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.

Petry suggested that with her party gaining across the country, the Christian Democratic Union is "falling apart" and said it's time for Germany to close its borders.

"We see the political climate changes towards AfD and against the established parties, especially the Christian Democrats, Angela Merkel's party -- 21 percent in the northeast of Germany is an absolutely brilliant result," Petry told CNN.

"The CDU is falling apart, but not only up there," she added. "We see that in many regions of Germany where the CDU bases, the party bases, don't agree with Merkel's policy anymore.

"We want that the German government closes German borders to illegal migration... We don't want a new border in Germany. But we need controlled borders. We need a change of legislation on a German level, but also an EU level, to avoid illegal migration."

Merkel has stood firm on Germany's position of accepting nearly all asylum seekers found to be legitimate refugees. Germany took in more than 1 million refugees in 2015, making it the most open country in Europe to asylum seekers.

Merkel admits there's a lot to do

Responding to the preliminary results from the weekend vote, Merkel -- who is in China at the G20 summit -- told reporters she was "dissatisfied with the outcome of the elections."

She admitted that "many people do not have our confidence regarding the refugee question."

After a series of terrorist attacks in July, Merkel refused to back down on her immigration policy, which she has termed a moral responsibility, especially to people fleeing the horror of civil war in Syria.

Monday the Chancellor insisted the decisions made on how to handle the refugee crises were correct, but acknowledged: "We still have to do a lot to regain our (party's) confidence."

Not a disaster, but of concern

Experts say the results don't mean there's a looming disaster for Merkel in next year's election if she chooses to run -- the AfD would likely have trouble forming a coalition with more traditional political parties -- but they do signal some concerns for Merkel.

Politico's senior European Union correspondent, Ryan Heath, said analysts believe Merkel still has an overwhelming likelihood of winning the national elections in 2017. However, these predictions are based largely on the national weakness of the Social Democrats, currently the junior partner in the coalition government.

Rise of the right

Formally founded in April 2013, AfD was set up by academics disgruntled by Merkel's eurozone crisis management -- most notably the Greek bailouts. However, AfD mutated into a more nationalist party that strongly opposed rising immigration levels -- particularly of people from Muslim countries. </s> BERLIN (AP) — Chancellor Angela Merkel's center-left deputy is accusing her conservatives of being too slow to respond to the migrant crisis following a state election in which a nationalist, anti-immigration party beat Merkel's party into third place.

Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel's Social Democrats won Sunday's election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where Merkel has her parliamentary constituency. It was the first of five regional votes before a national election expected next September.

The three-year-old Alternative for Germany drew supporters from across the spectrum to finish second with 20.8 percent of votes. Merkel's welcome for refugees a year ago was a prominent issue.

Social Democratic Party , SPD, chairman Sigmar Gabriel speaks about the results of the state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Sunday Sept. 4, 2016. The center-left Social Democrats, who lead the outgoing state government, were expected to be the strongest party with about 30 percent support. ( Britta Pedersen/dpa via AP)

Merkel has insisted that "we will manage" the crisis. Gabriel said Monday that "we have to do it too" and that "we have wasted a great deal of time with unnecessary arguments."

Workers remove an election poster of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's CDU top candidate Lorenz Caffier for the election in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Monday, Sept. 5, 2016. 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. (Christian Charisius/dpa via AP) </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> BERLIN -- 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.

The 3-year-old Alternative for Germany, or AfD, won 20.8 percent of votes in the election for the state legislature in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Merkel's Christian Democrats polled 19 percent.

The center-left Social Democrats, who led the outgoing state government in a coalition with the conservatives, remained the strongest party, with 30.6 percent support.

Economically weak Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, in Germany's northeastern corner, is home to 1.6 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 Alternative for Germany leader Frauke Petry celebrated "a blow to Angela Merkel." Local party 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 in migrants from Hungary. Germany registered more than 1 million people as asylum seekers last year.

New arrivals in Germany have slowed drastically this year. Still, New Year's Eve robberies and sexual assaults in Germany blamed 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 migrant crisis."

"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."

Merkel has yet to say whether she will seek a fourth term next year.

"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.

The state has been run for the past decade by the parties that currently run Germany. Popular Social Democratic governor Erwin Sellering has governed with Merkel's party as his junior partner. Both parties lost support compared with the previous state election in 2011.

Alternative for Germany is now represented in nine of Germany's 16 state legislatures and hopes to enter the national Parliament next year. Still, it fell short 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.

The next regional election is Sept. 18 in Berlin.
Voters in the federal German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern head to the polls in a regional election to elect members to the Landtag of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The latest polling indicates the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD) are expected to gain strongly.