Angela Merkel party trumped in Berlin polls

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right party suffered a historic loss in Berlin state elections on Sunday while the right-wing populist AFP scored at least 11.5 percent, according to public broadcasters’ exit polls.

Ms Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union won just 18 per cent — its worst post-war result in long-divided Berlin — likely spelling the end of its term as junior coalition partner to the Social Democrats, who won 23 per cent, according to the polls.

The Alternative for Germany party, which has railed against Ms Merkel’s open-door refugee policy, was said to have won 11.5-12.5 per cent of the votes cast, gaining Opposition seats in the tenth of Germany’s 16 states about one year ahead of national elections. Germany took in one million asylum seekers last year, and over 70,000 of them came to Berlin, with many housed in the cavernous hangars of the Nazi-built former Tempelhof airport, once the hub for the Cold War-era Berlin airlift.

Ms Merkel — who was booed this week by right-wing activists shouting “get lost” — later conceded it was hard to reach the “protest voters” who have turned their backs on mainstream parties.

Berlin Mayor Michael Mueller of the Social Democrats (SPD) dramatically warned on the eve of the election that a strong AfD result would be “seen throughout the world as a sign of the resurgence of the right and of Nazis in Germany”. The AfD, breaking a taboo in post-war German politics, has an open anti-immigration platform, similar to France’s National Front or far-right populists in Austria and the Netherlands. Polls in Berlin opened at 0600 GMT and closed at 1600 GMT. Some 2.5 million voters were eligible for voting. Merkel’s centre-right Christian Democrats (CDU) have a national majority — but in the city-state of Berlin they serve as junior coalition partner to Mr Mueller’s SPD, traditionally the strongest party in the city of 3.5 million.