Refugee issue key in election

– There’s barely a refugee to be seen on the streets of northeastern Germany, but in campaigning for Sunday’s regional election they feature everywhere – particularly at rallies of the populist, anti-migrant AfD party.

“If we want to feel like we’re still in Germany, we need to send a stop signal,” cried an AfD candidate, Lars Loewe, on the campaign stump at Wismar, a Baltic coast town of 42 000 inhabitants.

Around 300 mostly middle-aged people and pensioners listened attentively at the rally a week before the vote in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state.

The arrival of around a million asylum seekers in the country in 2015 has had a profound impact on Germany’s political and social landscape.

And analysts predict a voter backlash against the influx will be amplified in the state in Germany’s former communist east, the country’s least populous and poorest, which in 2006 elected members of the neo-Nazi party NPD to its regional parliament.

Take a stroll around any of the state’s key cities and there is little sign of the many refugees Germany has taken in over the past year.

After all, the state accepted only a relatively small number – 25 000 asylum seekers last year.

Nevertheless, up and down the state, the talk is all about Germany’s refugee influx and how it may sway voters. –

Wismar