Roundup: Anti-migration party records large gains in German regional elections: exit polls

Germany's anti-migration party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), has recorded remarkable gains in Germany's regional elections on Sunday and is able to break into three more German state parliaments, according to exit polls.

Eligible voters have cast their ballots in the southwestern states of Baden-Wuerttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate as well as eastern Saxony-Anhalt to elect three new regional parliaments.

The so-called "Super Sunday" vote is the biggest since a record number of refugees came to Germany, and is largely billed as a mood test for German Chancellor Angela Merkel's open door policy towards refugees.

The AfD, who has clearly positioned itself against Merkel's refugee and asylum policy, has cracked the 10-percent mark in three states and is able to break into all three state parliaments with its large gains in Sunday's elections, showed the polls.

Under German electoral law, winning five percent or more of the popular vote guarantees parliamentary representation.

In Saxony-Anhalt, the party achieved its biggest success by winning a stunning 24 percent of the vote, becoming the second strongest force, just after Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which has seen losses in all three voting states.

"The voting behavior in Saxony-Anhalt worries me the most," said Sigmar Gabriel, German Vice-Chancellor and head of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) to the vote projections in Saxony-Anhalt, adding that the democratic parties in the state are more "vulnerable".

Hans Michelbach, chairman of the medium sized businesses union of Merkel's Bavarian allies CSU, believed that the policy of "unlimited and uncontrolled influx of refugees" was responsible for CDU's losses.

He called the vote results a "provisional low point of a loss of trust" and demanded a "clear correction in the refugee policy."

Merkel has been under intense pressure to change her course after 1.1 million refugees, many of them Syrians, arrived in Europe's biggest economy last year alone.

But the chancellor has rejected measures such as imposing a cap on new arrivals, insisting instead on common European solution that includes distributing refugees among the 28 European Union member states.

As dissent grew over her stance, the AfD, formed in February 2013, has capitalised on the darkening mood in the course of the refugee crisis and gained remarkable support over the past months. Its calls for more limits on refugee influx play well with some German people who fear they are being inundated by foreigners after a record influx to the country in 2015.

Although the upstart party already has seats in five regional parliaments, it has so far made its biggest gains in eastern states that still lag western Germany in jobs and prosperity. But its "inroads" into western states have sparked alarm in Germany which has experienced a xenophobic history.

Merkel herself described the AfD as a "party that does not bring society together and offers no appropriate solutions to problems, but only stokes prejudices and divisions".

"As we progress step by step on the question of refugees, our policies will show results. And I'm convinced that from there, the support that AfD is enjoying right now will drop off," she said in an interview with German media. Endit