Berlin, Sep 7 (EFE). – Pressure on German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his government has increased following the landslide victory of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) on Sunday in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, which has shocked the coalition parties.
“We are all deeply shocked. We did not expect it this way. Of course, we have to accept it,” Merz said after a meeting with the leadership of his party, the Christian Democratic Union.
Merz added that when a large number of citizens “vote for political parties that fundamentally call into question our country’s democratic institutions and rules of the game, then that is an election result we cannot simply move past as if it were business as usual.”
The AfD won the election with 43.8% of the vote, compared to 17.2% for Merz’s Christian Democratic Union, 9.3% for the Social Democratic Party (SPD), 8.9% for the Greens, 8.6% for The Left, and 5.3% for Sarah Wagenknecht’s Left-Wing Alliance (BSW).
When Merz took over as CDU chairman four years ago, he set a goal of halving the AfD’s share of the vote.
