More than six million more immigrants live in Germany today than in 2005, when the first Merkel government was formed. The outgoing chancellor's party was able to win the local elections in Lower Saxony despite its deteriorating popularity indicators.
One of Angela Merkel's most lasting legacies will be the population change in Germany, Die Welt wrote in its compilation yesterday. In an article analyzing the 16 years of the chancellor, who will retire in the fall, the paper highlighted that Germany has the largest number of immigrants after the United States. According to UN data, when the first Merkel government was formed in 2005, their number was still 9.4 million, which has now reached 15.8 million.
The paper recalled that without migration, German society would have been shrinking for more than forty years due to the declining number of births. In recent years, an average of 900,000 Germans died, while the number of births hovered around 600,000, but has increased slightly since 2015, mainly due to immigration.
Merkel's party, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU), which is preparing for the federal parliamentary elections on September 26, are somewhat cut from the disadvantage. According to a recent survey by the polling company Forsa, the CDU/CSU has gained two percentage points and stands at 21 percent, the support of the social democratic SPD is 25 percent, and 17 percent of the participants would vote for the Greens.
In Bavaria, on the other hand, the CSU lost more voters, according to an investigation by the Sat.1 commercial channel, the party's support has dropped from 35 percent to 28 percent since July. The SPD currently stands at 18 percent in the province.
Despite the popularity of the CDU/CSU at its lowest point, the Christian Democrats won Sunday's local elections in Lower Saxony. The CDU collected 31.7 percent of the votes in the province, the SPD is just behind the party, which received 30 percent of the votes.
According to Bernd Althusmann, head of the CSU's Lower Saxony branch, the result is an important signal before the federal elections. The Christian Democrats do not have good prospects, especially in East Germany, according to Die Welt's article, which cited data from the Wahlkreisprognose and highlighted that the proportion of Social Democratic voters is high in these provinces, and that the right-wing AfD is also extremely popular in Saxony. According to Die Welt, East German data often foreshadows expected changes at the national level.
Source: magyarhirlap.hu
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