The results for German anti-refugee party Alternative für Deutschland in Sunday’s regional elections are remarkable: it won 15% of the vote in Baden-Württemberg, 12.5% in Rhineland-Palatinate and more than 24% in the east German state of Saxony-Anhalt – the strongest showing for a rightwing, populist party since the end of the second world war.

The last time these three states voted (in 2011), AfD didn’t even exist. Whatever way you look at the numbers, the AfD result is significant. However, the prevailing narrative in swaths of the press on Monday morning – that the results are a rejection of Angela Merkel’s refugee policy – is simplistic.

Here’s why. In Saxony-Anhalt, where the AfD did best, the vote for Merkel’s CDU held. The party dropped less than three points compared with 2011.

According to an exit poll for the state, a substantial majority of voters across all parties, except the AfD, prefers an open and tolerant society to a traditional one. The strongest source of AfD support, in the east German state and elsewhere, were previous non-voters (in all three states turnout was up by 10 points):

Second, in Germany’s third largest state, Baden-Württemberg, where the fall in the CDU vote was greatest, the party’s candidate tried to distance himself from Merkel’s policy. On the contrary, the Greens’ governing premier, Winfried Kretschmann, embraced her approach. And, according to exit polling in the state, nearly eight in 10 of the state’s voters were glad he did.

The Greens came first in the south-western state for the first time and, with nearly one in three former CDU supporters opting for Kretschmann’s party, cited refugees as the reason for the switch.

31% of voters moving from CDU to (!) Greens in Baden-Württemberg because of #refugee policy. https://t.co/y7TcKdOoL3 — Christian Odendahl (@COdendahl) March 13, 2016

The same dynamic is true to an extent in Rhineland-Palatinate. There, the Social Democratic party (SPD) stood by Merkel over the refugee crisis – and its support held. In both states, and across all three as a whole, a majority of voters supported the chancellor’s policy.

Merkel handling refugee crisis well? Yes +25 and +15 in two states; No by -5 in Saxony-Anhalt ht @MartinSelmayr https://t.co/c5iB0XuT6O — Sunder Katwala (@sundersays) March 13, 2016

Reducing any election to a referendum when it is not a binary choice rarely hits the mark. It is not a very sophisticated way of reading votes. But if we were to play that game, as many have, then the fact of the matter is that an overwhelming majority of Germans voted for parties aligned with Merkel’s refugee policy.

Nevertheless, the exit polling also shines a light on clear divisions among the country’s electorate. One in two in Baden-Württemberg said they were concerned that Islam’s influence is too strong, while voters in Rhineland-Palatinate were split down the middle when asked whether the refugee crisis under control.

As Germany’s Die Zeit put it: “A million immigrants later, Germans are shaken, but Germany’s civil society has shown its resilience.”

The crux of the matter is not that the elections are a victory – or a defeat – for Merkel’s refugee policy, but that the data is far more nuanced than some headlines have suggested. The results in the three states reveal a country that is now more polarised: the combined support of the two centrist platforms, the CDU and the SPD, is weaker, while support for other parties is on the up.

The figures also point to a splintered political party system: in all three contests, five parties are set to enter the respective parliaments. In 2011, three won seats in Rhineland-Palatinate, while four did so in the other contested states.

And there are also federal nuances and context in the numbers. In all three states, the party of the most popular candidate topped the polls. Moreover, The CDU went into elections holding one of the three contests, it didn’t “lose” two states, as some claimed.

Only the AfD (and the liberal FDP) gained vote share in all three states. For example, the Greens did badly outside Baden-Württemberg, while the SPD held in Rhineland-Palatinate but fell to a record low 10.5% in Saxony-Anhalt.

The rise of rightwing populists, greater polarisation and a splintered politics is not a new phenomenon in Europe. But Germany had so far been mostly immune to these trends. On Sunday that may have changed.

The question now is whether, as Merkel believes, the shift is temporary. In the runup to the 2013 general election, the CDU put together a string of poor state election results. The context is, of course, different, and issues change and evolve. The scale of the refugee question back then is not comparable to today’s challenges, but there was a euro crisis. and some predicted it could spell curtains for the chancellor. It did not: when it came to choosing a federal government, the German public decisively handed Merkel a third term in a landslide victory.