Brandenburg election: Olaf Scholz’s SPD leanly beats AfD

Germany’s chancellor eunites to have leanly dodged humiliation after exit polls recommended his party has held off the far right in his home state.

Olaf Scholz’s centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) won Sunday’s regional election in stronghgreater Brandenburg by fair one or two percentage points, according to polls by the two main accessible widecasters.

Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) stood a chance of triumphning the state, which has been ruleed by the SPD since German reunification in 1990.

But after voting finished at 18:00 (1600 GMT), predictions put the SPD on 31 to 32% to the AfD’s 29 to 30%.

The election, on the outskirts of Berlin, was being watched seally after the AfD became the first far-right party to triumph a state election in Germany since World War Two, in the eastrict state of Thuringia, on 1 September.

The party also came a lean second in Saxony on the same day.

An AfD triumph in Sunday’s election would have dealt a beginant blow to Scholz’s hopes of a second term in Germany’s federal elections next year.

It would also have been embarrassing, given he dwells in the state’s capital, Potsdam.

Scholz has faced plummeting opinion polls and incombat in his embattled coalition rulement.

But about two million voters in Brandenburg may have given him a exceptional political lifeline.

Dietmar Woidke, the state’s well-comprehendn SPD premier, has mostly shunned campaigning with Scholz and is critical of his ruling coalition’s behaviour and policies.

Scholz, uncomferventwhile, called earlier this month on other parties to block the “right-triumphg extremist” AfD from office by persisting a so-called firewall agetst it.

He portrayd the results in Thuringia and Saxony as “sour” and “stressing”.

“The AfD is damaging Germany. It is frailening the economy, dividing society and ruining our country’s reputation,” he said in a previous statement to Reuters.

The AfD, officipartner classified “extremist” in some states, is improbable to go in any regional rulements becaparticipate every other party has refused to toil with it.

Bolstered by youth help, it persists to capitalise on worries over an economic sluggishdown, immigration and the Ukraine war – worrys that resonate powerentirey in the establisherly Communist eastrict Germany.

Its triumph with almost a third of the vote in Thuringia shocked the political set upment. It placed nine points ahead of the conservative CDU and far in front of Germany’s three ruleing parties.

The AfD is second in national opinion polls, with the federal elections only a year away.

Co-directer Alice Weidel has claimed that “without us, a firm rulement is no extfinisheder possible at all”.