(Bloomberg) -- A day after only a narrow victory in state elections, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition realized once again that it needs to do far more to effectively stem the rise of populism in Germany.
Yes, the Christian Democrats and their junior coalition partner, the Social Democrats, won in the eastern states of Brandenburg and Saxony. But the gains of the euro-skeptic, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany, or AfD by its German acronym, were impressive by any measure. So much so, that AfD leader Joerg Meuthen, said that his party was the actual winner in Sunday’s poll. Its support nearly tripled in Saxony.
The narrow victories stave off a deeper political crisis in the 17-month-old governing coalition. But many leaders from the two ruling parties said the result was an alarm bell that required a change in policy to more closely target the underlying causes of the AfD’s popularity. The election also renewed the focus on Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, who had taken over from Merkel as party leader in December, pledging to win back voters lost to the AfD.
"The SPD but also the CDU must focus much more on the East," SPD Co-Chair Manuela Schwesig told ARD television on Monday.
"We’re not succeeding in drawing part of the people toward us, especially in the new states," Daniel Guenther, CDU premier of the state of Schleswig Holstein told Welt newspaper in reference to regions of former East Germany.
Despite nearly a decade of consistent economic growth, there has been growing discontent with Merkel and the ruling parties, particularly in the former communist East, which has undergone decades of social and economic change. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the region still has lower incomes, higher unemployment and often decrepit roads and railways. Plans to phase out coal by 2038 risks eliminating thousands of additional jobs in the region.
The Merkel administration ramped up promises to transfer civil servant jobs to the East, and earmarked 40 billion euros to help with the shift toward cleaner energy. But even within the CDU, there’s now a growing perception that the party hadn’t taken the AfD and its supporters serious enough in recent years.
AKK, as the CDU’s national leader is known in Germany, on Monday triggered an outcry when she suggested that the CDU could afford to ignore AfD voters, which represent roughly a quarter of the voters.
"That’s the wrong approach," retorted Mike Mohring, head of the CDU in the eastern state of Thuringia, which goes to the polls on Oct. 27. "When we lose voters, it’s our duty to win these voters back in the next election."
AKK later clarified that’ she meant to say that the CDU wasn’t interested in a dialogue with the AfD. "We fight for every voter," she said at a news conference, adding that the election results fell short of expectations.
Merkel’s ruling coalition has been plagued by infighting and a poor showing on Sunday could have further pushed the SPD, the junior coalition partner, to eventually leave government.
“It could have been worse,” Carsten Nickel, analyst at Teneo Intelligence in London, wrote in response to a query. “But there is no denying that the SPD continues to die a slow death while the CDU lacks any idea for the post-Merkel world.”
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