Angela Merkel’s ruling CDU party has been beaten into third place by an anti-immigrant and anti-Islam party in elections in a north-eastern German state, TV exit polls have suggested.
The Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD) party took 21 per cent of the vote behind the centre-left SPD’s 30.5 per cent.
BBC stated that the German chancellor’s CDU was supported by only 19 per cent of those who voted, according to the exit polls.
The vote was seen as a key test before German parliamentary elections in 2017.