German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party suffered its second electoral rout in as many weeks on Sunday as voters rejected her open-door migrant policy.
Nonetheless, analysts say it’s too early to tell what the vote signaled for a German general election next year.
In the regional state election in Berlin on Sunday, Merkel’s CDU party saw its share of the vote slump to its lowest level since 1990 while the anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party saw its share of the vote rise.
Projections from broadcaster ZDF gave Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party 18 percent of the vote, down from 23.3 percent in the last election in Berlin in 2011.
The Social Democrats (SPD) – a coalition partner with Merkel’s CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU) – also lost support, falling to 22.4 percent from 28.3 percent, but it remained the biggest party in the vote and were likely to ditch the CDU from their current coalition in Berlin and join forces with the Greens, Reuters reported.
