German Chancellor Angela Merkel's conservative CDU party was humiliated in key regional elections on Sunday as voters delivered their verdict at the ballot box about her open-door refugee policies.
Exit poll results in three out of 16 German states foretell a wipeout in next year's general election as the hard-right capitalized on public disquiet and altered the political landscape forever.
Baden-Wuerttemberg - solidly middle class and home to blue chip companies like Porsche and Daimler - was won by the Green Party after Merkel's CDU lost nearly 11 percent support since the last vote there in 2011.
And the Alternative for Germany - AfD anti-immigrant party - garnered 12.5 percent of the votes, propelling a party that her supporters call 'Nazis in pinstripes' into the local parliament.
Leader Frauke Petry said: 'We are seeing above all in these elections that voters are turning away in large numbers from the big established parties and voting for our party.
'They expect us finally to be the opposition that there hasn't been in the German parliament and some state parliaments.'
'The people who voted for us voted against this refugee policy,' added AfD deputy chairman Alexander Gauland.
'We have a very clear position on the refugee issue: we do not want to take in any refugees,' he declared.
Their success was even more prominent in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt where it scored a massive 23 percent.
The elections in Baden-Wuerttemberg - and in the states of Rheinland-Palatinate and Saxony-Anhalt - were billed as a referendum on Merkel's decision to open the country's doors to people fleeing war.
The results pile even more pressure on the embattled chancellor to change course and put a cap on refugees arriving in the country - something she had steadfastly refused to do despite spiralling violence and a surge in support for extremists.
The numbers on the so-called 'Super Sunday' vote crunched on the wrong side of disastrous for her.
'These elections are very important as they will serve as a litmus test for the government's disputed policy' on refugees, said Düsseldorf University political scientist Jens Walther.
Right-wing populism has won new support across the EU in the wake of the refugee crisis, with parties with similar agendas to AfD rising in the polls.
In Sweden, which also has taken in huge numbers of refugees and migrants, the far right Sweden Democrats went from a six per cent support in 2010 general election to steadily polling at 20 per cent support for the past year.
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