Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, was facing damaging losses on Sunday evening as the resurgent far-Right swept ahead of her party in regional elections.

Almost exactly a year after Mrs Merkel opened Germany’s borders to more than 1m asylum-seekers, her party was beaten into third place in her own parliamentary constituency, according to preliminary exit polls.

The anti-migrant Alternative for Germany party (AfD) surged ahead of Mrs Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) in initial projections with around 21 per cent of the vote.

If confirmed, the result will mean that a far-Right party is once again a force to be reckoned with in German politics.

“Perhaps this is the beginning of the end for Chancellor Merkel,” Leif-Erik Holm, the AfD’s regional leader, said as the results became clear.

His party, which campaigned on an openly anti-Muslim and anti-migrant platform, appeared to have beaten the Christian Democrats into third place with around 19 per cent of the vote.

The elections to the state legislature in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, one of Germany’s 16 federal states, will not affect Mrs Merkel’s commanding majority in the federal parliament.

But they will be seen as a key indicator of the public mood ahead of general elections scheduled to be held next year.