GERMAN leader Angela Merkel faces being ousted after a disastrous result in her coalition ally's heartland amid mounting tension over her mass migration policy.

Support for her political partners in Bavaria collapsed in regional elections yesterday while an anti-migrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) won its first ever parliamentary seats.

Merkel’s allies Christian Social Union (CSU) took 37.2 percent of the vote - the party's worst performance since 1950.

Meanwhile the hard-line AfD will enter the parliament of Bavaria, which is the country’s largest region, for the first time after winning 10.4 percent of the vote.

Fred Kempe, president of the Washington-based Atlantic Council think-tank, said: "The political earthquake was in Bavaria, but the aftershocks will be felt in Berlin.

"Talk will increase ever more about the end of the Merkel era.”

Last year the AfD won 94 seats in national elections.

Under Merkel's tenure Germany has experienced an unprecedented surge in migration along a spate of terrorist attacks, crimes committed by migrants and social unrest.

In August 6,000 far-right demonstrators massed in the city of Chemnitz after an Iraqi and Syrian allegedly stabbed a carpenter to death.

In Berlin the CDU is one of three in Merkel's federal coalition government along with its conservative sister, Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, and the Social Democrats Party (SPD).

SPD leader Andrea Nahles said the "poor performance" of the federal government in Berlin said: "It's clear that something has to change."

More than one million migrants entered Germany in 2015 thanks to Merkel's open door policy.