Forty percent of Germans want Chancellor Angela Merkel to resign over her open door immigration policy, a poll has revealed; up from one in three last October. Support for her party is remaining relatively buoyant, however, suggesting that growing numbers of Germans are blaming Mrs. Merkel personally for the problems Germany is experiencing the wake of a massive influx of migrants.
The INSA poll for Focus magazine surveyed 2,047 Germans between January 22 – 25 has also revealed a growing split in public opinion on the matter. For while 40 percent wanted to see Mrs. Merkel step down, a further 42.5 believed that the migrant crisis was not reason for her to quit, NDTV has reported.
Support for the German leader was strongest among members of her own party, the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU); just one in four CDU members wanted to see her step down.
But that support is significantly offset by the supporters of other parties. Two in three voters for the Alternative for Germany (AfD), Germany’s version of the UK Independence Party, want to see the Chancellor quit thanks to her policies on migrants. The AfD has been a constant critic of Mrs. Merkel’s insistence on welcoming unlimited numbers of migrants, and takes a strongly reduced-immigration, Eurosceptic line.
Frauke Petry, the party’s current leader has previously spoken out against Germany’s “massive integration problems linked to the fact that a religion like Islam conveys a vision of the state that is totally foreign to that which we know in Europe”.
More surprisingly, some 45.4 percent of those who support left wing party Die Linke, and 41.3 percent of Social Democrat voters also want to see Mrs. Merkel step down over her migration policies, according to The Local.
Support for the German Chancellor has slipped significantly since last October, when INSA found that one in three wanted to see her resign, against 52 percent who thought she should stay on. At that time, Mrs. Merkel was receiving her strongest support from her own party, but also from the Greens, prompting head of INSA, Hermann Binkert, to comment:
“In addition to her own voters, Greens in particular support the Chancellor. In relation to the refugee issue Merkel can rely on them as substantive pillars of a future black-green [CDU/Green] alliance.”
Since then, the large-scale sexual attacks in Cologne on New Year’s Eve and elsewhere have rocked the country, causing the German people to feel increasingly afraid within their own communities. Last week Breitbart London reported on a video uploaded to Facebook by a 16 year old German girl who made an empassioned plea for the deportation of Muslim migrants who show no respect for German culture.
She blamed Mrs. Merkel personally for the current state of Germany, saying: “Thank you, Angela Merkel, for killing Germany! I have no more respect for you, Merkel. I do not think you know what you have done. You do not see how our lives have changed. Open your eyes! … You have killed Germany!”
A separate poll released today suggests the girl is not alone in blaming Merkel specifically, as the crisis is having only a marginal effect on party polling figures. The Elector Research Group poll put Merkel’s ruling CDU/CSU bloc on 37 percent, ahead of the Social Democrats who remained on 24 percent. The AfD meanwhile, are still in third place at 11 percent.
The figures are unchanged from earlier January polling, and represent only a marginal slide for the CDU/CSU coalition from 42 percent in September.
On Thursday Germany’s ruling coalition agreed measures to tighten up on asylum claims, including plans to deport failed asylum seekers more quickly. Mrs. Merkel commented: “We want those with prospects of remaining to be integrated, but we also want to say that we need those who have no prospect of remaining to return.”
The proposals still need Parliamentary and Cabinet approval to be implemented.
In a separate package announced earlier this week in response to the Cologne attacks, the Cabinet also approved measures to make it easier to deport criminal migrants.
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