(Bloomberg) — The leader of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats came under growing fire from rivals as she struggled with a deepening divide in her party over how to deal with regional lawmakers’ rogue alignment with the far-right.CDU Chairwoman Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer failed in an effort to convince legislators in the eastern state of Thuringia to support growing calls for a new election. Leaders from Chancellor Angela Merkel to the Social Democrats are demanding a new vote as the best way to clean the slate after the Thuringian CDU aligned with the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany earlier this week to elect a new state premier, triggering a political firestorm.The standoff laid bare the eroding authority Kramp-Karrenbauer has in reining in rogue elements of the party. Thuringia’s CDU leader, Mike Mohring, said his lawmakers told Kramp-Karrenbauer in a five-hour overnight meeting in Erfurt that a fresh vote was a no-go.“The immediate demand for new elections irritated many people,” Mohring told reporters in Berlin before the meeting on Friday.CDU leaders appeared to back Kramp-Karrenbauer, with Health Minister Jens Spahn, a standard-bearer of party conservatives, maintaining that a new election was the “best step forward.” But others signaled that AKK, as she’s widely known, didn’t have the situation in hand.“It’s clear that nothing worked,” Armin Laschet, CDU Deputy Chairman, said in an interview on ARD television. The leadership “should have known what would happen there,” he said in reference to the party headquarters.An opinion survey by Forsa showed that Merkel’s party would be the biggest loser of the episode, losing almost 10 percentage points since the last election in October to 12%.The CDU meeting is also a prelude to a potentially more combative meeting with Merkel’s junior coalition partner, the Social Democrats, on Saturday. The SPD has derided the Thuringian CDU’s rogue maneuver as political treachery and said it had a list of questions for Kramp-Karrenbauer and her party.The head of the CDU youth organization, Tilman Kuban, also weighed in, telling broadcaster ARD that the party “needs a leadership that is clear, that has a clear stance, a clear message, and is able to exert pressure.”The fallout reverberated across the political spectrum. Christian Lindner, the chairman of the Free Democrats, which appointed the rogue state premier candidate in Thuringia, said he would seek a confidence vote in an emergency meeting in Berlin.To contact the reporters on this story: Arne Delfs in Berlin at adelfs@bloomberg.net;Patrick Donahue in Berlin at pdonahue1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editors responsible for this story: Ben Sills at bsills@bloomberg.net, Raymond Colitt, Andrew BlackmanFor more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.comSubscribe now to stay ahead with the most trusted business news source.©2020 Bloomberg L.P.