Source: The Local
“From today onwards the competition between the AfD and the CDU for the leadership of the middle class camp has been set alight,” AfD deputy leader Beatrix von Storch wrote on Facebook on Sunday.Von Storch was responding to news that the AfD had won 14.2 percent of the vote in Berlin state elections and had thus come within three percentage points of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU).The CDU scored 17.6 percent, their worst post-war result in the German capital.
With national elections approaching in 2017, it was the latest poor result for the beleaguered CDU, which came third behind the AfD in state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania earlier in September.“In 2017 we will witness Angela Merkel fighting for her political life and the AfD will become the third largest political power in Germany – at the least,” a triumphant von Storch wrote.Party co-leader Jörg Meuthen was slightly more sober in his analysis, saying nevertheless that “we are firmly convinced that we will land in the Bundestag (national parliament) with a double-digit score” next year.The AfD harnessed a wave of anger over the refugee influx to claim around 14 percent of the vote in a city that has long prided itself on its diversity and international appeal.
Categories: Europe, Europe and Australia, European Union, Germany