German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her Christian Democratic Union last Sunday suffered a severe setback in regional elections in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The CDU was pushed into third place in the poll by the populist right-wing Alternative for Germany (AFD) which got 20.8 per cent of the vote compared to the CDU’s 19 per cent. The Social Democrats (SPD) came first with 30.6 per cent of the vote.
In the same election in 2011, the CDU had come second with 23.1 per cent of the vote. The result is without doubt a personal defeat for Merkel as Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, in the former East Germany, is the Chancellor’s own constituency. It also shows how migration has changed the political landscape in Germany one year after more than a million migrants arrived in the country.
Alternative for Germany was only founded as a party in 2013 as an anti-euro party opposed to eurozone bailouts for countries like Greece. It has now turned its focus to immigration and today has MPs in nine of Germany’s 16 state parliaments. In the 2013 national election it received 4.7 per cent of the vote, narrowly missing the five per cent threshold for representation in the federal Parliament.
The results in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern also show that Alternative for Germany is taking votes from all the country’s political parties, not just the centre-right CDU. The Left Party (former Communists), the SPD, the Greens and the far-right NDP all saw a substantial decrease in their share of the vote compared to the 2011 election in the state. The only party to see a slight increase in its support was the Liberal FDP which went from 2.7 per cent five years ago to three per cent.
It is true that popular support for Alternative for Germany tends to be higher in the former Communist eastern states of Germany but its popularity should no longer be simply dismissed as a protest vote. The mainstream parties, especially the CDU and SPD, must come to terms with the fact that the sudden massive influx of refugees and migrants into Germany did cause a considerable amount of apprehension within German society.
Popular support for Alternative for Germany tends to be higher in the former Communist East Germany
There is a good chance that Alternative for Germany, which has the support of around 12 per cent of German voters in opinion polls, will enter the federal Parliament after next year’s national elections, thus complicating the post-electoral coalition building process. This would mean five parties competing for power (unless the Liberals make the five per cent threshold, which would mean six parties in Parliament) with two of them, the Alternative for Germany and the Left Party automatically excluded from any coalition negotiations.
This would make room for manoeuvre in the formation of a government more difficult and could lead once again to a grand coalition between the CDU and SPD, which is always risky because the Opposition will be dominated by populist parties of the Left and Right (with the exception of the Greens). It is always better to have a major mainstream centrist party dominating the Opposition because voters will inevitably want to vote for a different government and against the status quo – and having populist parties as this alternative is not good news.
There is no doubt that Merkel, who has won three consecutive elections, has been a very good Chancellor of Germany.
She has presided over a strong economy and she is by far Europe’s leading figure who has guided the bloc well during some very difficult years. The way she handled the migrant crisis was brave but very controversial. A rethink of her migration policy, however, would certainly be in order and Merkel is also under pressure to do this from elements within her own party.
There is certainly a possibility that Merkel will lose next year’s election, although she has surprised her critics many times in the past. A Social Democrat-led government (with the Greens or even the CDU as a junior partner) would be a perfectly acceptable outcome; what we don’t want, however, are major gains by the populist parties.
To make the populist parties less appealing Merkel – and the other mainstream parties – must address people’s concerns about migration, focus on integrating migrants into society, agree to a policy which sends economic migrants back to their country and consider some sort of threshold for migrants allowed to enter Germany.
Of course, there are external factors which need to be considered.
The EU migration deal with Turkey has certainly helped stabilise the situation and yesterday’s US-Russia agreement over Syria offers some hope for peace in the region. It is in everyone’s interest, not least Germany, for both deals to hold.