A new far-right German party that campaigned aggressively against the refugees who have poured into the country in the last year scored stunning victories in three state elections on Sunday as voters rejected Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-door policies and abandoned her conservative party in droves.

The populist Alternative for Germany (AfD), which turned the elections in three of Germany’s 16 federal states into a referendum on Merkel’s refugee policies, won 24% of the vote in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, 12.5% in the southwestern state of Baden-Wuerttemberg and 11.7% in Rhineland-Palatinate.