Angela Merkel’s Party Was Just Defeated By Right-Wing Populists in State Election

If you could turn back the clock on Germany by three years, you’d find a society that didn’t have any significant conservative movement. Any right-wing party that ran for office could expect to garner no more than a single digit percentage of the votes on an election day.

Since Chancellor Angela Merkel ran her country into the ground however, that has changed in a big way. After letting over a million refugees settle in her country, the German population is quickly losing patience with Merkel and her party, and they’re turning to conservative political groups like the anti-migrant and euro-skeptic Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.

On Sunday an election was held in the northern German state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party was absolutely trounced by the AfD. The CDU was knocked down to third place, after the AfD and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD).

The CDU received only 19% of the vote, followed by 21% for AfD and 30% for SPD. This marks the lowest electoral result ever recorded for the CDU in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. It’s also quite embarrassing for Merkel because her seat in the German government, which she has held since 1990, is from that state.

The vote doesn’t bode well for the future of the CDU. Parliamentary elections are scheduled to be held in 2017, and if this level of support for the AfD holds until election day, then the CDU’s multi-decade domination of German politics could come to an end.