The German chancellor appeared to have avoided humiliation after opinion polls showed her party had held off the far-right in her home state.
Olaf Scholz’s center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) won Sunday’s regional election in its stronghold of Brandenburg by just one or two percentage points, according to exit polls by two major public broadcasters.
The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has a chance of winning in the state that has been governed by the SPD since German reunification in 1990.
But after polls closed at 18:00 (16:00 GMT), projections showed the SPD would win 31-32% against the AfD’s 29-30%.
The election, taking place in a Berlin suburb, is being closely watched after the AfD became the first far-right party won a state election in Germany since World War IIin the eastern state of Thuringia, on September 1.
The party also came a narrow second in Saxony on the same day.
An AfD victory in Sunday’s election would deal a blow to Scholz’s hopes of winning a second term in Germany’s federal election next year.
This is also a shame because he lives in the state capital Potsdam.
Scholz faces plummeting opinion polls and infighting within his troubled coalition government.
But some two million voters in Brandenburg may have given him a rare political opportunity.
Dietmar Woidke, the state’s popular SPD chancellor, barely campaigned with Scholz and criticized the behavior and policies of his ruling coalition.
Meanwhile, Scholz called on other parties earlier this month prevent the “far-right party” AfD from holding office by maintaining so-called firewalls to counter it.
He described the results in Thuringia and Saxony as “bitter” and “worrying”.
“The AfD is harming Germany. It is weakening the economy, dividing society and damaging our country’s reputation,” he said in an earlier statement to Reuters.
The AfD, officially classified as “extremist” in several states, is unlikely to enter any regional governments because every other party has refused to cooperate with it.
Bolstered by youth support, the movement continues to capitalize on concerns about economic recession, immigration and the war in Ukraine — concerns that resonate strongly in formerly communist eastern Germany.
The party’s victory in Thuringia, with nearly a third of the vote, shocked the political world. It opened a nine-point lead over the conservative CDU and left Germany’s three governing parties far behind.
The AfD is second in national opinion polls, with a federal election just a year away.
Co-leader Alice Weidel declared that “without us, there would be no stable government”.
