BERLIN

Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s center left-liberal coalition suffered major losses in European Parliament elections on Sunday, while the far-right Alternative for Germany’s (AfD) votes were at a record high.

Projections by public broadcaster ARD showed Chancellor Scholz’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) could only manage to win 14% of the vote, down 1.8 percentage points from the last election.

Scholz’s coalition partner the Greens crashed to 12%, sharply down from the 20.5% of the vote it scored five years ago.

The coalition’s junior partner, the liberal Free Democrats (FDP), was projected to win 5%, with a slight fall of 0.4%.

The results are widely interpreted as voters' punishment of the coalition government, which saw its popularity dive to an all-time low of 22% this month.

The main opposition Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) won the biggest share of the vote with 30%, managing to increase their vote modestly from 28.9%.

The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) was projected to finish second with a record 16.2% of the vote, up from 11 in the last election.

Exit polls showed that majority of AfD voters were concerned about their economic welfare and were demanding stronger measures to stop irregular migration.

Some 95% of AfD voters said “so many foreigners were coming to Germany,” and 78% expressed their fear of “not being able to maintain their standard of living” in the future.

Meanwhile, the newly formed left-wing populist party, Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW), managed to win 5.8% of the vote in its first European election.

During its election campaign, the BSW sharply criticized Chancellor Scholz and coalition partners for delivering weapons to Ukraine, and called for diplomatic initiatives to end the Russia-Ukraine war.