Merkel's Christian Democrats won 34.4 percent support overall in Sunday's elections for councils in Lower Saxony, in Germany's northwest, down 2.6 points from five years ago. The local voting in Lower Saxony was sandwiched between two state elections, a more important test of sentiment. AfD is strongest in the formerly communist east, and Lower Saxony wasn't expected to be fertile ground for the party. Its showing Sunday was well below the 11.9 percent it won in municipal elections in March in Hesse, a neighboring western state. Lower Saxony's state government is a coalition of the Social Democrats and Greens, who finished third on Sunday, with Merkel's party leading the regional opposition.

Source: ABC News September 12, 2016 06:41 UTC