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BERLIN – The voters in Bavaria, the German state that formed the front line of the 2015 migration crisis, have left the conservatives in power on Sunday. But instead of turning mainly to the anti-immigrant far right, they gave the strongest impetus to a new centrist force: the pro-refugee Greens.
The Christian Social Union, Chancellor Angela Merkel's Bavarian brotherhood – and a key element of her fragile coalition government – lost her absolute majority and was on the verge of losing her share of votes to 36.2%, according to the initial surveys.
The far-right party Alternative for Germany is expected to get 10.9% of the vote, which will allow it to enter the Bavarian Parliament for the first time.
But the big winner of Sunday's high-profile regional election was the Greens – a marginal party that quietly rose to become a new centrist force throughout Germany. Their share of the vote is expected to double to 18.1%, making it the most powerful party in a region long considered one of the most conservative in Germany – and perhaps a coalition partner within the bloc. next Bavarian government.
The election results, which have also seen the other partner of Merkel's coalition, the Social Democrats, collapse and fall behind the far right, will certainly reverberate in Berlin, where some see it as a sign of further losses for Merkel's conservatives, already at the bottom of the post-war period. In two weeks, his party is expected to lose ground, if not all elections, in another regional election in the state of Hesse.
The extreme right has not been long in making the link. Calling the Bavarian result a "signal for Merkel", Katrin Ebner-Steiner of the Alternative for Germany told supporters Sunday night that "Merkel must leave".
The Greens celebrated a victory that few people would have thought possible a year ago.
"My heart has jumped!" Katharina Schulze, leader of the Bavarian Greens, said shortly after the publication of the first forecasts.
Originally founded as a single environmental protest party, the Greens have become the most consistent voice in favor of migration – and as such, the The most clearing of a far right rebirth.
Recent polls suggest that the party's strategy is working, not just in Bavaria: a recent poll asking voters which party would choose the next ballot revealed that the Greens are now the second largest party in the country, with a percentage point higher than the previous one. ahead of Alternative for Germany, and only nine behind Merkel's conservatives.
Strikingly, the Social Democrats, long the main opposition party in the center left but now the other member of the coalition Merkel, should collapse to 9.6% in Bavaria.
Regional elections in Germany have received little attention elsewhere, notably in Bavaria, where the Conservatives have held an absolute majority for all but one since 1962.
But in the current polarized political climate, the Bavarian elections are seen as a way to measure how far the political battlegrounds have been redefined in Germany and Europe – due to feelings of migration, the rise of 39, extreme right and the collapse of the political center.
The arrival in Germany of more than one million migrants since 2015 has shaken the consensus in a country unaccustomed to the long-established political fragmentation in neighboring countries. Bavaria, which had four parties in Parliament, may have to have at least six.
The election has been in many ways a test of how to win back unhappy voters.
Perhaps the most interesting result is that the nativist slogans of the Alternative for Germany – calling for an end to "asylum tourism" and promising to protect Germany's borders – have not given this party the major lift that many had predicted a few months ago.
"We did not get good results," Munich supporters Markus Söder, the conservative prime minister of Bavaria, said shortly after the first polls were released. "We will have to learn lessons."
It remains to be seen whether the head of the Bavarian Conservatives, Horst Seehofer, will survive the defeat of his party – both as party leader and interior minister in Merkel's cabinet. Mr Seehofer is a longtime critic of the Chancellor and her immigration policy. Her departure would release Ms. Merkel from a minister who has almost dropped his government twice in the past three months.
