German Chancellor Angela Merkel is having a rough month. Her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party has taken a beating in regional elections throughout September, most recently in a ballot held Sunday in Berlin. Her problem is her support for immigration and the settlement of over a million refugees who have fled violence in the Middle East over the last year. The beneficiary of her determination to do the right thing for those displaced by war is the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD), a Euro-skeptic party that is anti-Islam and anti-immigrant. Merkel has a year before she faces a national election, which should give her enough time to recover. Doing so will require a unity of purpose among the chancellor and her political allies, some of which share the AfD's skepticism about refugees.
September began with elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, one of the smaller of Germany's 16 states. Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania does not have much political or economic influence, but it is where Merkel has her parliamentary constituency, in theory providing the chancellor with something of a boost. That theory proved false in the Sept. 4 ballot: The election was won by the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), which led the incumbent state government with the CDU, with 30.6 percent of the vote. The CDU came in third, with 19 percent of the vote, bested by AfD, which won 20.8 percent of votes.
The bad news was repeated last weekend in Berlin state elections. Again, the SPD came in first with 21.6 percent of the vote. The CDU was second, with 17.6 percent of the electorate, with the radical Left Party, remnants of the old communists, and the Greens coming in third and fourth, respectively. AfD came in fifth, claiming 14.2 percent of ballots cast.