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Merkel Might Be in Real Trouble If German Populists Win Sunday

These Might Be the Elections That Finally Lead to Merkel’s Fall

(Bloomberg) -- First it got loud, then it got ugly at a recent campaign rally of the Alternative for Germany party in a commuter town near Berlin.

Demonstrators against the far-right group blew whistles, beat drums and blared music to try to drown them out. Then there were the jeers and signs like “only the dumbest cows choose their own butcher." The standoff reflects the ‘us-versus-them message’ that has won the populists growing support in the former communist region and now threatens to contaminate the rest of German politics.

“We are reclaiming our country,” Alice Weidel, the AfD’s co-leader, roared at the enthusiastic crowd in Oranienburg, likening Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government to East Germany’s former authoritarian regime. “They do everything they can to denounce us, but every blow makes us stronger,” she said to resounding applause from hundreds of supporters in the Brandenburg town about 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the center of the nation’s capital.

Merkel Might Be in Real Trouble If German Populists Win Sunday

Nearly 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, two state elections in Germany’s east have become the latest flashpoint of the right-wing populism that has swept across Europe. With Merkel’s government already wobbling, a poor showing by the ruling parties in Sunday’s vote could eventually strain the coalition beyond repair. The risks to political stability come as Germany teeters on the brink of a recession, potentially complicating efforts to support Europe’s largest economy.

Even if the AfD becomes the strongest force, it is unlikely to be able to govern, as no other party is willing to form a coalition with it. That, in turn, would play into its rhetoric that the system is stacked against it and its supporters.

Merkel Might Be in Real Trouble If German Populists Win Sunday

“Unfortunately a lot of people want to believe them," Harald Grosse, 66, a retired salesman from Oranienburg, said in reference to what he considers simplistic and nationalist proposals for complex problems. AfD supporters “don’t want to see the wolves running around in sheep’s clothing.”

In Brandenburg, the state that surrounds Berlin, the AfD is vying to become the largest party, running neck-and-neck with the Social Democratic party -- Merkel’s junior coalition partner, which has dominated politics there since reunification in 1990. Similar trends are at play in neighboring Saxony, where Merkel’s Christian Democrats are in the hot seat.

Merkel Might Be in Real Trouble If German Populists Win Sunday

The coalition between Merkel’s CDU-led bloc and the SPD -- her reluctant partner -- has spent much of its 17 months in power bogged down by infighting. Public disfavor has been expressed in one election defeat after another. The two ballots in the east could deliver a message that’s hard for the SPD to ignore.

The party is already reeling from a dismal performance in this year’s European Parliament vote, which triggered the resignation of its chief. Most candidates seeking the job are already inclined to abandoned the Merkel administration, and a poor showing on Sept. 1 could provide them with further arguments.

“It’s totally clear that the difficult situation of the SPD on the national level impacts us here in Brandenburg,” Dietmar Woidke, Brandenburg’s premier and the SPD’s top candidate, said as he prepared to face voters at a beer garden in Spremberg, a town up the Spree river from Berlin in a coal-mining region unsettled by the government’s plans to phase out the fossil fuel.

The SPD’s weakness has become the Achilles’ heel of Merkel’s coalition, with several members openly speculating that the party is only one more electoral failure away from crashing out of the government. But given the current leadership vacuum in the party and another eastern election in Thuringia in October, the fallout may take time to play out, according to Carsten Nickel, an analyst at Teneo Intelligence in London.

“The bigger risk might be that this autumn’s eastern German results further add to that mix of anger and insecurity that has been building in the SPD for a long time now -- even if we could start to see its effects only at a later point,” he said.

Merkel Might Be in Real Trouble If German Populists Win Sunday

While the mainstream parties highlight plans for better transport, education and other public services, the populist party has been tapping into the pain of reunification, which left thousands jobless. The campaign has even co-opted slogans -- like "Wir sind das Volk" or "We are the people" -- from East Germany’s uprising more than 30 years ago.

On the campaign trail in Brandenburg, the AfD is hard for rivals to compete with, connecting with voters in a way that mainstream parties haven’t been able to. In Oranienburg, a festival-like atmosphere complete with German rock classics, a bouncy castle for kids, and plenty of beer and bratwurst lured supporters to fill a broad city square. A moderator told attendees not to get provoked by the raucous protesters across the street.

By contrast, the CDU -- which also hopes to unseat Woidke -- launched its final push for support by gathering a few dozen people inside a stately 18th century horse-breeding center in the rural countryside, far removed from potential hecklers as well as undecided voters.

To contact the reporters on this story: Chris Reiter in Berlin at creiter2@bloomberg.net;Patrick Donahue in Berlin at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Raymond Colitt

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