The embattled center-left party of Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany scored a hard-fought and narrow victory over the far-right ethnonationalist party, Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD, in an election in an eastern state of the country, potentially energizing Mr. Scholz’s government in Berlin.
Although they do not affect the government in Berlin directly, state elections in Germany are often seen as a reflection of the national mood and a snapshot of the government’s popularity. Sunday’s election, in the state of Brandenburg, is the third and final election in a state that was once part of East Germany before the country votes for a new chancellor and federal government in a year.
Mr. Scholz’s party, the Social Democrats, won 31 percent of the vote, and the AfD got just above 29 percent, according to official preliminary results. Nearly 45 percent of voters chose extremist parties, and the election had the highest voter turnout in the state, 73 percent, since reunification.
The surprise win for the Social Democrats was as much the result of the popular governor’s intense campaigning as it was because of strategic voting against the AfD, according to exit polls.
“Our goal from the outset was to prevent our state from being stamped with a big brown stamp,” said Dietmar Woidke, the governor, on Sunday night, referring to the far right.
Earlier this month, two other eastern states, Saxony and Thuringia, held their elections, and extremist parties dominated. The AfD, some chapters of which have been labeled extremist by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, won around 30 percent in all three states; in Brandenburg, the Social Democrats still edged out the AfD. In Thuringia, the AfD got 32.8 percent, taking the plurality of the vote, the first time a far-right party won the plurality in a German state since World War II.
Even though his party won, Mr. Woidke said that if an openly far-right extreme party can “win around 30 percent of the vote in our state, then it is a shrill wake-up alarm for all of us democrats, for all those who stand for freedom, openness and tolerance.”
A new far-left party, built up around a former communist, comfortably won double digits in all three states, beating the Social Democrats in both Thuringia and Saxony.
Both the AfD and the new far-left party, Bewegung Sahra Wagenknecht, campaigned on controlling immigration, which many Germans perceive as a problem, according to polls, and against military support for Ukraine.
Sylvia Knake, 70, a longtime Social Democrat voter, switched to the conservative Christian Democratic Union this year because she disagrees with Mr. Scholz’s support for Ukraine. “We are now building weapons and exporting them?” she said. “Haven’t we learned anything from our history?”
Mr. Scholz did not immediately respond to the win for his party. But Kevin Kühnert, a party leader, called the narrow victory “an encouragement for our entire party.”
Still, it’s not clear that Sunday’s success will help Mr. Scholz’s chance next year. Mr. Scholz’s government is unpopular and his party is polling at 14 percent support. According to polls sponsored by German public television, many voters in Sunday’s state election said they voted for the Social Democrats to ensure the AfD would not gain power.
This strategic voting is one reason the mainstream opposition, the Christian Democrats, did so poorly, coming in at just over 12 percent of the vote, the lowest it has ever scored in Brandenburg.
Die Linke, the far-left successor party of the socialist party that ran East Germany under communism, won 3 percent of the vote, missing, for the first time since unification, entry into the state house.
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