Mecklenburg-Vorpommern state election

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, weakened by an election setback in September, launches a second bid to build a coalition government on Sunday when she sits down with the Social Democrats (SPD) for exploratory talks, reported Reuters. 

"We warned you that the far right is on the rise," said Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan on Sept. 25, implicitly addressing German Chancellor Angela Merkel, as if she was not aware of the rise in xenophobic, even racist votes in her own country. Merkel had lost some votes in Germany's election on Sept.

A third pollster has put Germany's Social Democratic Party (SPD) ahead of Angela Merkel's Christian-Democrat (CDU).

This is the first time in ten years that the party has been ahead of its grand coalition partner, according to a DeutschlandTrend poll published by ARD and quoted by Politico.

The Social Democrats (SPD) are narrowing the edge of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of German Chancellor Angela Merkel before the general election in September, a survey shows.

The CDU would get 33% and the SPD would receive 32% of the vote, the figures projecting the center-left party's highest result since April 2006.

More than half of Germans see refugees and integration as Germany's biggest problem, a survey showed, despite the number of newcomers falling significantly on the year. 

A record 890,000 mainly Muslim migrants from the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere arrived in Europe's largest economy in 2015, prompting concerns about security and integration. 

The far-right National-Democratic Party of Germany (NPD) has won one MEP seat after Sunday's European elections.

NPD, which has received around 300 000 votes, benefits from an earlier decision by Germany's Constitutional Court to remove the three-percent election threshold for parties as "non-democratic" and "discriminatory".