The most powerful ally of Merkel has tried to emulate the far right – and has been criticized

The ruling party of the Christian Social Union, Germany, thought it was going to thwart the far right in Sunday's regional elections by copying its nativist rhetoric and hard line on immigration. Instead, it was hammered. The party's heavy defeats are the latest sign that the establishment's parties are preparing for defeat if they let the far right frame the political debate and do not give their own vision.

The CSU won 37.5% of the vote on Sunday in the southern region of Bavaria, a 10% decrease from its previous result and a poor performance since 1950. Meanwhile, the far-right party Alternative for Germany got almost the exact share of the vote, the CSU lost and entered the Bavarian parliament for the first time with 10.2% of the vote.

In the year leading up to the vote, CSU, which is the sister party of the Christian Democrat Union Merkel, has moved to the right on issues of migration and border control. CSU chief Horst Seehofer, who is also Germany's interior minister, almost toppled the government over the summer, when he clashed with Merkel to demand a tougher borders. he called migration "the mother of all problems" and earlier this year, said: "Islam is not part of Germany."

After violent demonstrations of the far-right in the city of Chemnitz became a national problem and prompted Merkel's conviction, Seehofer offered sympathy protesters and said that if he was not a politician he would have joined them. In July, on the occasion of its 69th birthday, Seehofer hailed the expulsion of 69 Afghan asylum seekers, including one later. he's committed suicide after arriving in Kabul.

But instead of undermining the growing support for the AfD, Seehofer eventually lost voters and alienated his party's base.

Rather than opting for a less extreme version of the AfD with Seehofer, far right voters preferred the real article to an imitation. Although the UHC did not succeed in reclaiming its right-wing supporters, it also lost them on the left. The pro-immigration Green Party, which came second in the vote, gathered thousands of CSU voters who rejected the Seehofer platform.

After the election, prominent members of the CSU recognized the party badly calculated in its fixation on migration.

"You can not win to the right what you will lose in the center. Today 's results also suggest it, "Babara Stamm, a senior CSU official, told Politico Europe.

CSU is not the only party in Europe to have turned against its right. Seehofer's fierce anti-immigration and anti-Islam rhetoric is in line with European politicians who have tried to cope with the pressures of the far right by adopting more populist rhetoric and anti-immigration policies. Last month in Sweden, for example, the left-wing social democrats of the country had their worst result generations after legitimizing some of the views of the far right and neglected issues outside of immigration.

Bavaria's vote also reflected a more significant change in German politics, with the latest elections leaving a fragmented political landscape after decades of political stability. Instead, smaller parties make more and more gains, and traditionally powerful parties have more difficulty forming governments.

Despite the weak performance of CSU, the center-left Social Democratic Party is the most losing vote. He has been in crisis since historic losses in national elections last year and ranks fourth in Bavaria with less than 10% of the vote. Liberal and pro-immigrant voters flocked to the left-wing environmentalist Green Party, which won 17.5 percent of the vote on Sunday.

A survey According to estimates, about a quarter of the new supporters of the Greens also came from the CSU, just behind the Social Democrats. Unlike the UHC, the Greens did not let the far right dictate their speech but focused not only on immigration, but also on the broader set of issues that matter to voters.

Fifteen HuffPost editions around the world cover the rise of the far right. Read more:

Bayernwahl: Ein Besuch auf dem land, wo die CSU einbrach und die Grunen jube (HuffPost Germany)

Sweden is what happens when liberals let the far right set the agenda (HuffPost U.S.)

Steve Bannon's grand plan for Europe has big flaws (HuffPost U.S.)