Germany's Social Democrats fend off far right in crucial state election
The results will have provided some relief to Scholz's beleaguered party, who saw devastating losses in two other states in eastern Germany in recent weeks, ITV News Europe Editor James Mates reports from Berlin
Words by ITV News Producer Hannah Ward-Glenton
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's party won an election in the eastern state of Brandenburg on Sunday, gaining a narrow edge over the increasingly popular right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
The Social Democrats won 30.9% of the votes in the state that surrounds Berlin, while the AfD was a close second with 29.2% of the vote.
A new leftist movement, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, or BSW, came in third with 13.5% while the centre-right Christian Democrats - Angela Merkel's former party - took 12.1%.
The results will have provided some relief to Scholz's beleaguered party, who have seen devastating losses in two other states in eastern Germany in recent weeks.
“It's great that we won,” Scholz said from New York, where he was attending a meeting at the United Nations.
But the party's success was attributed more to the popular state governor, Dietmar Woidke, who had distanced himself from Scholz during his campaign.
“It is an important victory for me, it’s an important victory for my party, and it’s an important victory for the state of Brandenburg," Woidke said after polls closed on Sunday night.
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But he also said the strong showing of the far-right party means there is work to do.
“[The AfD] have achieved about 30 percent, a lot of voters have voted for the AfD, and that’s too much. So we have to think about these results and we have to make our policies better," Woidtke said.
The AfD became the first far-right party to win a state election since the Second World War on September 1, when it took 32.8% of the votes in Thuriniga, while the party also made notable gains in neighbouring Saxony.
The Social Democrats have governed Brandenburg continuously since German reunification in 1990, and a loss there would have been a major setback for Scholz, who has his constituency in the state capital, Potsdam.
The successes of the far-right in pockets of Germany have been amid growing backlash against large-scale migration to Germany in the last ten years, as well as recent extremist attacks across the country.
The latest polling suggests that if a national election were to happen next week, Alternative for Germany would garner around 10.3% of the vote, which is similar to their vote share in the 2021 federal election.
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