By Luke Mouracade, '21State elections in Bavaria this month solidified what many Germans and international observers have known for some time, that the political order of the last half century is crumbling. The center-right party CSU (the Christian Social Union) lost the absolute majority it has held for much of the last 70 years, and the center-left Social Democratic Party’s (SPD) support was halved to 9%. Additionally, the far-right anti-immigration party (AfD) picked up 10% of the vote, enough to enter the Bavarian state parliament for the first time.Though the direct effects of the elections are at the state level, the results match a trend throughout the entirety of Germany. After the national election last year, Angela Merkel, now in her fourth term as chancellor, took half a year to cobble together a governing coalition after her party (the Christian Democratic Union, or CDU) saw its lowest levels of support since 1949. The AfD picked up 12% of the vote, allowing the party to enter the Bundestag (federal parliament). Essentially, heightened migration has upended the traditional balance of political power in Berlin, and recent elections only prove that Merkel’s efforts to deal with the refugee crisis have not made the issue disappear.The CSU in Bavaria faltered in their reaction to the refugee crisis, shifting their rhetoric too far to the right. They have since self-corrected, but the party failed to escape the political fallout of mishandling an incredibly controversial issue. The results of the recent elections give a hint as to how divided Bavarians are on the topic of immigration: the two parties to make the most gains were Afd and the Green Party (Die Grüne), the parties most starkly anti-immigration and pro-immigration, respectively.The election has undoubtedly given Chancellor Merkel further cause for concern. After squeaking through the 2017 federal elections and just managing to build a governing coalition, her political brand has sustained yet another powerful blow. Under Angela Merkel, Germany led the EU to a strong deal with Turkey, dramatically dropping the number of refugees entering European countries and doubling the EU’s aid to Turkey to help deal with the crisis. One might think that her handling of the crisis would shut down conservative criticism, but it appears that she is in just as much trouble as before. If Germany’s traditionally powerful political institutions are to retain their special status in the country, they must effectively convince German citizens of their ability to govern, and they must remind Germans that the refugee crisis is far from the country’s only major concern.