CSU Wins Bavaria Parliament Election - Authorities

The Social Democrats have 9,7 percent of the vote, the Free Voters win 11,6 percent, the Green have secured 17.5 percent, the AfD has 10,2 percent, the liberal FDP wins 5.1 percent, and the Left has 3.2 percent. The turnout was at 72 percent, up from the 63.6 percent registered at the previous election in 2013, In the last regional election in September 2013, the CSU secured 47.7 percent of the vote to get 101 of the Landtag's 180 seats.

Bavarian Minister President Markus Soeder has said he accepted with humility his conservative party’s apparent loss of majority in the state parliament.

"This is not an easy day for the CSU. We did not poll well, the results are painful […] We accept the results with humility and will learn from this experience," he told reporters at a press briefing. He stressed that the CSU remained the state’s strongest party and promised to form a "sensible government" that will maintain stability in Germany’s second-richest region.

Soeder stressed that the CSU remained the state’s strongest party and promised to form a "sensible government" that will maintain stability in Germany’s second-richest region. He also said that conservatives would start coalition talks "as soon as possible" with all parties, including anti-immigration AfD, which looks set to enter the regional parliament for the first time in its history.

READ MORE: Security 'Erosion': Germany to Ease Migration for Potential Terrorists — AfD

Bavaria has become the first German state that opened migrant processing centers; in the districts of Donauwoerth, Zirndorf, Regensburg, Deggendorf, Schweinfurt, Bamberg und Manching.

In May, the Bavarian government passed a controversial bill expanding the powers of police in the wake of an influx of migrants, including giving cops the right to use online surveillance, facial recognition, postal seizures, drones, body cameras and preventative genetic DNA analyses. The move sparked mass protests in the Bavarian capital of Munich last spring, against what are considered by some to be increasing right-wing policies of the federal state government.

Germany is attempting to integrate over a million of undocumented immigrants and refugees who entered in 2015-2016 after Chancellor Angela Merkel opened its borders, a controversial decision that catapulted the AfD into the lower house of the German parliament after elections last year.

The president of the AfD, Joerg Meuthen, told Sputnik that he was satisfied with his party’s performance in Sunday’s Bavarian parliamentary race. "The CSU would [make] a huge mistake to rule Bavaria on the left with the Greens, whose program is wrong on all points. This is what Merkel wants in Berlin, of course,"  Meuthen claimed.

READ MORE: Terrorists Taking Advantage of Migration Crisis to Enter Europe — Frontex