Angela Merkel suffers dramatic setback in regional elections

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Chancellor Angela Merkel has suffered a dramatic setback in German regional elections as voters backed rightwing populist forces in protest at her contentious refugee policies.

The anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland party looked set to beat forecasts in all regions voting on Sunday — and score the biggest electoral success for the populist right since the rebirth of German democracy after the second world war.

The domestic setback comes as Ms Merkel is struggling abroad, battling to secure EU partners’ support for a controversial deal with Turkey to staunch the migrant inflows.

According to exit polls, the AfD won 23 per cent of the vote in the depressed eastern region of Saxony-Anhalt, where the radical right has long been active. But it also exceeded expectations in wealthy western Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, scoring 12.5 per cent and 11 per cent, respectively.

The AfD mobilised droves of former non-voters, boosting voter participation as high as 72 per cent, far above normal levels for regional polls — a sign of how deeply the refugee crisis is shaking Germany.

Celebrating her success, Frauke Petry, the AfD’s co-leader, said: “We have fundamental problems in Germany which have led to this election result.”

Ms Merkel’s CDU failed in its hopes of winning back power in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, two former bastions, and was left struggling to form a government in Saxony-Anhalt.

The social democrats, Ms Merkel’s coalition partners, who have strongly backed her refugee policies, fared even worse, being driven into fourth place behind the AfD, in Baden-Württemberg and Sachsen-Anhalt. The SPD salvaged a little battered pride in Rhineland-Palatinate, where it narrowly retained power, beating off a CDU challenge led by Julia Klöckner, a rising political star.

The crumb of comfort for Ms Merkel is that all three CDU lead candidates distanced themselves from the chancellor during the campaign by backing tougher refugee policies, such as stronger German border controls. Their electoral setbacks may help Ms Merkel when she has to confront CDU sceptics.

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Leading CDU candidate in Rhineland-Palatinate Julia Klöckner casts her ballot in Bad Kreuznach, southern Germany

However, such niceties may be of little use in convincing the increasingly discontent German public or fellow EU states such as Austria, that have openly challenged her open-borders approach by closing frontiers.

Even French president François Hollande, her most important EU ally, voiced concern at the weekend over a key aspect of the planned Turkey deal — visa liberalisation.

The arguments could multiply as Ms Merkel and other fellow leaders prepare for the next EU migration summit later this week.

If the predictions prove right, the AfD will now be represented in eight of Germany‘s 16 regional assemblies. In Saxony-Anhalt it looked set to record the best regional election result of any German populist rightwing party since 1945.

In the last rightwing surge in the early 1990s, also fuelled by immigration, the Republikaner party scored 10.9 per cent in Baden-Württemberg. It later faded away, amid internal splits, as immigration slowed. The neo-Nazi NPD, the most prominent of far-right groups, scored its best result in regional elections in 2004 in Saxony, with 9.7 per cent.

According to exit polls, the CDU vote plunged over 11 per cent to 27.5 per cent in Baden-Württemberg, though it fell by much less in Rhineland-Palatinate (-2.8 per cent to 32.5 per cent), and in Saxony-Anhalt (-3.5 per cent to 29 per cent). The SPD suffered expected losses of around 10 percentage points in Baden-Württemberg and Saxony-Anhalt, hitting just 11.5 per cent in Saxony-Anhalt, its second-worst regional election result ever.