Angela Merkel punished by voters

Angela Merkel is set to be punished by voters on Germany’s state elections | Daily Mail Online

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative CDU party was humiliated in key regional elections on Sunday as voters delivered their verdict at the ballot box about her open-door refugee policies.

Exit poll results in three out of 16 German states foretell a wipeout in next year’s general election as the hard-right capitalized on public disquiet and altered the political landscape forever.

Baden-Wuerttemberg – solidly middle class and home to blue chip companies like Porsche and Daimler – was won by the Green Party after Merkel’s CDU lost nearly 11 percent support since the last vote there in 2011.

And the Alternative for Germany – AfD anti-immigrant party – garnered 12.5 percent of the votes, propelling a party that her supporters call ‘Nazis in pinstripes’ into the local parliament.

Leader Frauke Petry said: ‘We are seeing above all in these elections that voters are turning away in large numbers from the big established parties and voting for our party.

‘They expect us finally to be the opposition that there hasn’t been in the German parliament and some state parliaments.’

Their success was even more prominent in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt where it scored a massive 23 percent.

The elections in Baden-Wuerttemberg – and in the states of Rheinland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt – were billed as a referendum on Merkel’s decision to open the country’s doors to people fleeing war.

The results pile even more pressure on the embattled chancellor to change course and put a cap on refugees arriving in the country – something she had steadfastly refused to do despite spiralling violence and a surge in support for extremists.

The numbers on the so-called ‘Super Sunday’ vote crunched on the wrong side of disastrous for her.

In Rhineland-Palatinate the CDU came in second behind the centre-left SPD with 32.5 percent and the AfD scoring double-digits again with 11 percent.

In Saxony-Anhalt, an eastern state which has seen some of the worst violence projected towards the 1.2 million refugees who arrived in the country last year, the AfD came in as the third strongest party.

Merkel’s CDU was the biggest winner with 32 percent, but this was down nearly seven percent on the last election and a projected alliance between the SPD and the Die Linke – the Left – party means it will be deprived of power. Die Linke scored 21 percent of the vote.

The SPD – Mrs. Merkel’s partners in power on the national stage and supporters opf her refugee policy – lost nearly 10 percent in the state over their last showing in 2011.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3489936/Angela-Merkel-set-punished-voters-open-door-refugee-policy-Germany-s-Super-Sunday-state-elections.html#ixzz42oWVsqbl