Scholz’s Social Democrats hold back the far right in German state vote

POTSDAM, Germany (AP) — The Social Democrats of Chancellor Olaf Scholz won an election in the eastern German state of Brandenburg on Sunday, gaining a narrow edge over a growing far-right party, according to the vote count. The vote took place three weeks after the far right made gains in two other states in eastern Germany.

According to final results published Sunday evening by the state electoral administration, the Social Democrats won 30.9% of the votes in the election to the parliament of Brandenburg, the state that surrounds Berlin. The far-right Alternative for Germany was a close second with 29.2%.

A new leftist movement, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, or BSW, came in third with 13.5% while the center-right Christian Democrats took 12.1%

The first-place showing for the Social Democrats brought a reprieve to the beleaguered Scholz, whose three-party governing coalition has fared poorly in elections so far this year.

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.

Scholz has said he would like to be the party’s candidate for chancellor in next fall’s federal election, and Sunday’s vote was also being watched for what it might signal about his political future.

“It’s great that we won,” Scholz said from New York, where he was attending a meeting at the United Nations, according to the German dpa news agency.

But the success of the Social Democrats in Brandenburg — after defeats elsewhere — was largely credited not to Scholz, but to the efforts of the popular state governor, Dietmar Woidke.

He distanced himself from Scholz during the campaign and took the gamble of promising to resign in case of a win by the far right.

He was able to celebrate his political survival on Sunday night.

“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.

But he also said he felt the strong showing of the far-right party means there is work to do.

“They (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 told The Associated Press.

The far-right party has gained support amid a growing backlash against large-scale migration to Germany over the past decade and recent extremist attacks. Germany’s economy, once a powerhouse, has been weakening, adding to a general feeling of malaise.

Sunday’s vote followed a heated election campaign centered on the issues of migration, internal security and peace. Both the far right and the new leftist movement want to end weapons deliveries to Kyiv as Ukraine tries to defend itself against Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The Alternative for Germany won the most votes in the state of Thuringia and also did well in Saxony in elections held on Sept. 1. The new party on the left, the BSW, also made a strong impact, while the parties in Scholz’s unpopular national government obtained extremely weak results — as they did again on Sunday in Brandenburg.

The vote in Thuringia marked the first electoral victory for a far-right party in Germany since World War II. It triggered concerns in Germany and abroad about the growing support for the extreme right in Germany, a NATO member and the largest European Union country.

Towards the end of voting on Sunday afternoon, a group of anti-AfD protesters gathered near a restaurant where the far-right party’s supporters gathered to learn of the election results.

Their chanting and the sound of whistles sought to disrupt the party. One carried a placard saying “AfD is so 1933,” referencing the year Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power.

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Associated Press writer David Keyton contributed from Potsdam.