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.
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