Germans in the state of Brandenburg were voting in a regional election on Sunday with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) expected to finish first, building on successes in other eastern states and beating Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats in one of their traditional strongholds.

The ruling SPD has just scraped by in a critical electoral test, but a closer look at the numbers show trouble for next year's elections.

A state election is taking place in Brandenburg three weeks after a far-right party made gains in two other states in eastern Germany

After a string of bitterly disappointing elections, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz's centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) finally have something to celebrate after winning Sunday's vote in the eastern state of Brandenburg.

Brandenburg is a longstanding stronghold for the party. But it is located in Germany’s relatively impoverished east, where the anti-immigrant A f D performs far better than in the west. That made this election a test of whether the SPD could beat the populists on its home ground.

Germans in the state of Brandenburg were voting in a regional election on Sunday with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) expected to finish first, building on successes in other eastern states and beating Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats in one of their traditional strongholds.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s SPD party narrowly beat the far-right Alternative for Germany in the Brandenburg election, which was seen as a referendum for him.

Germany's Social Democrats won in the eastern state of Brandenburg, pushing out the far-right AfD in a tightly contested race.

How much of what we saw in Brandenburg over the weekend was a vote of confidence in the SPD, or was it more a kind of pushing away of the AfD? How are you interpreting it? Yeah. So listen, I mean, when the when you look at the actual results here,

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.