Germany held the first two of three important state elections over the weekend. And the results were striking. Leading up to the elections polls had the current opposition party in the Bundestag, Alternative for Germany (AfD), neck and neck with the ruling parties in both Saxony and Brandenburg.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition was battered by the results but not beaten. In Brandenburg, her partners, the Social Democrats (SPD), beat AfD by 5 points, 26.3% to 23.5%, while in Saxony Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) held onto 32% of the vote while AfD took 27.5%.
