The Alternative for Germany (AfD) has had another strong showing in a German state election.
In Brandenburg, in the east of the country, the AfD narrowly missed out on being the winning party in elections held on Sunday.
The Social Democratic Party (SPD) came first with 30.9%, narrowly ahead of the AfD with 29.2%.
A new populist party, Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – Reason and Justice (BSW), was third with 13.5%. Fourth place went to the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) with 12.1%. No other party managed to clear the 5% threshold necessary to secure representation in a German legislature.
This is the third election this month in the former East Germany where the AfD has performed well. In Thuringia it was the single-biggest party with 32% of the vote, while in Saxony it came second with 31%.
In those two states, parties have committed to working together to keep the AfD out of government. This will likely be the case in Brandenburg too.
Exit polls showed that as many as three-quarters of the people who voted for the SPD had done so to fend off the AfD, rather than out of a strong sense of support for the SPD.