by Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
Alternative for Germany party scores biggest Berlin victory for a far-right party since World War II, wins 14% of the votes in local Berlin elections • Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats win only 17.5% of the votes, worst ever results in a capital race.
Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservatives
suffered their second electoral blow in two weeks on Sunday, with
support for her Christian Democrats party (CDU) plunging to a
post-reunification low in a Berlin state vote due to unease with her
migrant policy.
The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany
party (AfD) won the highest share of the vote for the far-right in
Berlin since the World War II, with around 14%, while Merkel's party
suffered its worst ever results in the German capital, with just 17.5%.
The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) remained the largest party, with
23% of the votes.
The result means the AfD will enter a 10th state assembly, out of 16 in total.
"From zero to double-digits, that's a first
for Berlin," cheered AfD's top Berlin candidate Georg Pazderski,
predicting that the electorate would next year kick out Merkel's
national right-left grand coalition.
"We have achieved a great result," Beatrix von
Storch, one of the AfD's leaders, said. "We have arrived in the capital
and are on our way to the Bundestag."
The blow to the CDU came two weeks after they suffered
heavy losses in the eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The
setbacks have raised questions about whether Merkel will stand for a
fourth term next year, but her party has few good alternatives so she
still looks like the most likely candidate.
Reuters and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=36529
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