German Chancellor Friedrich Merz\u2019s conservative party has won local elections in the country\u2019s most populous state, while the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) nearly tripled its share of the vote from five years ago.<\/p>\n
Merz\u2019s centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) won about 33.3 percent of the vote in his home state of North Rhine-Westphalia, preliminary results showed on Monday.<\/p>\n
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The centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) came in second with 22.1 percent, followed by the AfD, which won 14.5 percent.<\/p>\n
The figure marks a 9.4 percentage-point increase in support for the nationalist, anti-immigration party since the last election.<\/p>\n
North Rhine-Westphalia Premier Hendrik Wust, of the CDU, hailed the outcome, calling his state the \u201cpowerhouse\u201d of the governing party.<\/p>\n
But the strong showing for the AfD, he said, \u201cmust give us food for thought\u201d.<\/p>\n
He said it \u201ccannot let us sleep peacefully\u201d and that centrist politicians must ask themselves \u201cwhat the right answers are when it comes to poverty and migration\u201d.<\/p>\n
AfD\u2019s coleaders were jubilant.<\/p>\n
Alice Weidel called the results a \u201chuge success\u201d, while Tino Chrupalla offered congratulations to the party\u2019s supporters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a great success for us,\u201d Chrupalla wrote in a post on X. \u201cWe are a people\u2019s party and we all bear a great responsibility for Germany.\u201d<\/p>\n
The election on Sunday was the first electoral test for Merz, who took office in May.<\/p>\n
The western state is home to nearly a quarter of Germany\u2019s 83.51 million population and encompasses the industrial Ruhr area as well as key cities such as Cologne and Dusseldorf.<\/p>\n
AfD \u2018entrenching\u2019 in western Germany<\/p>\n
Oliviero Angeli, a political scientist at the Dresden University of Technology, said the results marked a \u201crelative success\u201d for the CDU, but also underscored the growing support for AfD in western Germany.<\/p>\n
Angeli told Al Jazeera the CDU has strengthened its position in North Rhine-Westphalia, despite strong criticism of Merz, including accusations of policy stagnation at the federal level.<\/p>\n
What is \u201cstriking\u201d, however, is the performance of the AfD, he said.<\/p>\n
The outcome shows the party \u201cis steadily entrenching itself in the West\u201d after the national election in February, in which it emerged as the strongest political force in eastern Germany and the second-biggest party at the national level.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile AfD remains five to 10 percentage points below its national average, it is nonetheless consolidating its position in western Germany,\u201d Angeli said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMigration continues to be the AfD\u2019s core issue, and the party can still mobilise around it despite the recent decline in asylum applications,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The AfD, founded in 2013 by right-wing economists during the European debt crisis, has moved further right in the ensuing years, vehemently opposing the country\u2019s decision to welcome a million refugees from the Middle East and parts of Africa in 2015.<\/p>\n
Germany\u2019s domestic security agency in May branded the AfD as a threat to the country\u2019s democracy, describing it as a racist and anti-Muslim organisation that \u201caims to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society\u201d and \u201csubject them to unconstitutional discrimination\u201d.<\/p>\n
It said the party has stirred \u201cirrational fears and hostility\u201d towards minorities, as \u201cevident in the numerous xenophobic, anti-minority, anti-Islamic, and anti-Muslim statements continually made by leading party officials\u201d.<\/p>\n
The AfD has condemned the classification as \u201ca blow against democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n
The party\u2019s strong showing on Monday prompted expressions of concern from politicians in neighbouring states, too.<\/p>\n
Olaf Lies, the SPD premier of the state of Lower Saxony, said he was looking at the \u201cAfD\u2019s results with great concern\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis should give us pause for thought because this is a path that is emerging, and we democrats must counter it,\u201d he told ARD television.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"German Chancellor Friedrich Merz\u2019s conservative party has won local elections in the country\u2019s most populous state, while the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":425911,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[33,2000,299,1824,12,285,74429],"class_list":{"0":"post-425910","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-elections","9":"tag-eu","10":"tag-europe","11":"tag-germany","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-politics","14":"tag-the-far-right"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115207577515042077","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425910","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425910"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425910\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/425911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425910"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425910"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425910"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}