German Anti-immigrant Party Beats Merkel's Party in Her Home State

REUTERS.COM: German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats fell to third place in a state election on Sunday behind the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) and anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, TV projections showed.

In a stinging defeat for Merkel in her home district one year ahead of federal elections, the upstart AfD won 21.4 percent of the vote in their first election in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern by campaigning hard against the chancellor's policies on refugees, according to a projection by ZDF TV at 1615 GMT.

"This isn't pretty for us," said Michael Grosse-Groehmer, one of Merkel's top deputies in parliament in Berlin in a ZDF TV interview. "Those who voted for the AfD were sending a message of protest." » | By Erik Kirschbaum and Andrea Shalal | BERLIN | Sunday, September 4, 2016