Germany's Social Democrats Hold Back Far Right In State Vote, A Victory For Scholz

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