Chancellor Angela Merkel came under renewed attack on Monday from her most important critic — Bavarian conservative leader Horst Seehofer — amid widespread concern in Germany about the success of rightwing populist forces in Sunday’s regional elections.
Mr Seehofer, head of the CSU, sister party to Ms Merkel’s CDU, pledged to resume his fight against the chancellor’s contentious refugee policy following the dramatic advance of the anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland party.
“It cannot be that the answer to the people after such an election result is: everything goes on as before,” said Mr Seehofer. “This is a tectonic shift in the political landscape in Germany.”
His rapid intervention signals that the political pressure on Ms Merkel will increase as she tries to rally support for her open-doors refugee policy in advance of a key EU-Turkey migration summit later this week.
He was speaking as Ms Merkel was due to meet her closest CDU advisers to consider their response to elections which saw rightwing populists score their biggest gains in national or regional polls since the rebirth of German democracy after World War Two. Bild, the top-selling newspaper, headlined its story: “Election earthquake shakes Berlin.”
According to official provisional results, the AfD won 15.1 per cent in Baden-Württemberg, 12.6 per cent in Rhineland-Palatinate and 24.2 per cent in Saxony-Anhalt, where the radical right has long been active.
The CDU scored 30.3 per cent in Baden-Württemberg, 31.8 per cent in Rhineland-Palatinate and 29.8 per cent in Saxony-Anhalt.
The SPD took 12.7 per cent of the vote in Baden-Württemberg, 36.2 per cent in Rhineland-Palatinate and 10.6 per cent in Saxony-Anhalt.
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. However, the rightwing vote remains far lower than in some other EU states, notably France.
Celebrating her success, Frauke Petry, the AfD’s co-leader, said: “We have fundamental problems in Germany which have led to this election result.”
Mainstream party leaders responded with shock to the results and pledged to try to win back AfD voters. Justice minister Heiko Maas (SPD) said: “We must expose their stupid words with objective arguments.”
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.
Michael Grosse-Brömer, a CDU parliamentary whip, argued that the party still had a chance of joining coalition governments in all three regions, but he conceded: “It’s not been easy tonight.”
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 Saxony-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.
Ms Merkel also faces pressure from an increasingly discontent German public and fellow EU states such as Austria, that have openly challenged her open-borders approach by closing frontiers.
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 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.
The fall in the combined vote of CDU and the SPD, the two parties that have long dominated Germany, could signal political splintering, with smaller parties, notably the Greens and the liberal FDP, playing a bigger role in future coalitions.