BERLIN, Sept. 18 (UPI) -- A neo-Nazi party has embarrassed the German government by winning parliamentary seats in Chancellor Angela Merkel's home state.
The racist National Democratic Party, or NPD, took 6.4 percent of the ballot in the northeastern state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, where Merkel started her political career and to this day keeps her constituency.
In the poor eastern parts of the state, where unemployment exceeds 25 percent, the NPD was strongest -- up to 15 percent voted for the neo-Nazis, many of them young and first-time voters.
It is the first time the state's voters have put the NPD in parliament since Germany's reunification more than 15 years ago. Harald Ringstorff, the state's Social Democratic prime minister, called the NPD's gains in Sunday's election an "absolute catastrophe."
The Social Democrats lost heavily, and it remains unclear how the ruling coalition will look.
In the city state of Berlin, where voters also went to the polls, the SPD claimed the top spot under the leadership of the city's openly gay mayor, Klaus Wowereit.
Friedbert Pflueger, the top candidate for Merkel's conservatives, was unable to beat Wowereit despite campaign help from the chancellor.
The Social Democrats must now choose their coalition partner; alliances with the conservatives, the Green Party or the far-left Left Party are all possible.
