The rightwing Alternative for Germany (AfD) has bagged third place in municipal elections in the central state of Hesse and the populist party is polling strongly a week ahead of three key state elections.
Preliminary results, which won’t be confirmed until Thursday, gave AfD 13.2% of the vote in Hesse’s ballot, just beating the Greens (11.6%) for the third position. In some municipalities, the euroskeptic and anti-migration party led by 40-year-old Frauke Petry claimed more than 20% voter support, according to the provisional results, DPA reported.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats narrowly claimed the most votes, at 28.2%, just ahead of the Social Democrats on 28%.
State Finance Minister Thomas Schafer, a Christian Democrat, said he expected AfD’s final results to be slightly lower than initially predicted. He also ruled out any coalition between CDU and AfD.
A poll for broadcaster ARD showed support for AfD in Saxony-Anhalt at 19%, a result that would make it the third strongest party there after Merkel’s Christian Democrats and the communist-rooted Linke party. In Baden Württemberg, AfD polled at 13%, with 9% projected support in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Under German electoral law, winning 5% or more of the popular vote guarantees parliamentary representation—the same target Petry has set for the party nationwide in 2017’s general elections.
The party’s strong anti-immigration stance has congealed since Petry successfully ousted party founder and economist Bernd Lucke, a committed euroskeptic who was rather more moderate in other regards.
“First of all, we need to work toward controlling the borders and deporting a lot of people who are in Germany without having the right to be here,” Petry told Reuters from the campaign trail in an interview in Bitterfeld-Wolfen, an industrial town in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt.
