Angela Merkel Isn't Backing Down

Many people seem to expect Chancellor Angela Merkel to apologize. Her party, the Christian Democratic Union, keeps underperforming in regional elections. Most recently, the CDU took a drubbing in parliamentary elections in Berlin on Sept. 18. The reason: the backlash against the kindness Merkel showed toward refugees last year.

There have been five defeats this year, in every state that held elections. The party's biggest loss -- a 12 percentage-point decline from the 2011 result -- was in Baden-Wuerttemberg, the wealthy southwestern state that received the most asylum applications this year -- more than 75,000. In Berlin, the CDU lost 5.8 percentage points, but the result destroyed the CDU-Social Democrat coalition that governed the city-state: It no longer has a majority in the city council, and the Social Democrats, who won a plurality, must now look for a different configuration, possibly with different partners.