2016 German Regional Election Sunday Sep 04,2016

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was hammered in an election in her home state on Sunday Sep 04,2016 by the hard-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

Mecklenburg-Western Pormerania is Germany's poorest state and elections are usually decided on economic issues. But this one was fought solely on the refugee question.

After the AfD win the party leader Frauke Petry said: 'We have made history here today.'

Exit polls in the Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania election show Mrs Merkel's CDU conservatives slumped to a tied second place with the AfD which has eroded her power base because of her open door immigration policy.

Both parties scored 22 % of the votes cast exactly a year after Angela Merkel took the decision to open the country up to unregulated refugee immigration. 

The AfD now have seats in 11 regional parliaments in Germany.

The result in the state, currently ruled in a coalition with her CDU and the centre-left SPD, proves that  Angela Merkel is failing to connect with voters.

The result will further plunge her prospects of serving a fourth term in office in doubt when Germany stages its general election in the autumn of 2017.

The vote on Sunday in the state - where she has had her own constituency since 1990 - was a referendum on her controversial refugee programme which has seen more than a million people enter the country in the past 12 months.