Malu Dreyer and Winfried Kretschmann have been so supportive of chancellor’s policy they were called ‘stalkers’ by critics

The rise of anti-immigration party Alternative für Deutschland may have grabbed the headlines in the wake of Germany’s state parliament elections, but the polls also saw major victories for two politicians who have been so supportive of the German chancellor’s strategy for the refugee crisis that conservative critics have called them her “stalkers”.

In Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate, the incumbent state premiers increased their majorities on Sunday night after consistently backing Merkel’s comparatively liberal stance on the refugee question.

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In the south-west, the heartland of Germany’s conservatives, Winfried Kretschmann led the Green party to a historic 30%, thus coming three points ahead of the Christian Democrats, who had been the strongest force in Baden-Württemberg since the second world war.

A 67-year-old Catholic with a white toilet-brush haircut, Kretschmann has said in interviews that he was “praying every day” for the chancellor’s health during the crisis. He has repeatedly defended Merkel against critics within the CDU, leading to the “stalker” tag in the circles surrounding his rival, Guido Wolf.

“Every week, the rivals in her own party come up with new, mostly short-term solutions such as migration caps, transit zones or border closures, fostering the illusion that Germany could just disengage and solve the refugee problem all on its own,” Kretschmann told Tagesspiegel newspaper. “That’s incredibly dangerous. Because anyone who destroys Schengen and closes national borders endangers Europe.”

The former chemistry teacher is a son of refugees himself: his Catholic parents were forced to leave Protestant east Prussia at the end of the second world war; an older brother died during the journey.

If Kretschmann has “stalked” the chancellor’s course, this has also involved him straying from his own party’s position. Unlike Green politicians elsewhere in the country, he has supported a move to tighten asylum rules for migrants from Algeria and Morocco and presented himself as a hardliner on the question of criminal asylum seekers being sent back to their homeland.

In Rhineland-Palatinate, Social Democrat state premier Maria Luise “Malu” Dreyer snatched victory from under her rival’s nose after having trailed the CDU’s Julia Klöckner in polls for months.

At a national level, Germany’s Social Democrats have struggled to find a distinct voice on the refugee issue in an increasingly noisy political debate. While the party has supported Merkel’s stance on border closures, SPD leader and deputy chancellor Sigmar Gabriel has also warned of the strain immigration is putting on German society, calling for social investment to match spending on the refugee crisis. In two of this weekend’s three state elections, the SPD halved its votes.

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But 55-year-old Dreyer managed to convert her high personal approval ratings into a 36.2% win, improving her party’s 2011 result by half a percentage point. Like Kretschmann, Dreyer contrasted her own consistency on the refugee question with her opponent’s wavering.

“The government and I have a clear line on the subject of refugees,” Dreyer, who has multiple sclerosis and sometimes uses a wheelchair, told Taz newspaper in December. “People who are not allowed to stay are sent back. Those who are allowed to stay we integrate quickly.”

According to a poll by Forschungsgruppe Wahlen, majorities of 55% and 60% in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate supported Merkel’s management of the refugee crisis, while in Saxony-Anhalt a majority of 49% said the chancellor was managing the issue “badly”.