The leadership of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s party has sought to squash questions about his candidacy in next year’s national election after narrowly beating the far right in a regional vote.

Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats held off the far-right Alternative for Germany and look set to cling on to power in the eastern state of Brandenburg, sparing the chancellor and his party another embarrassing electoral setback.

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.

The Social Democrats of Chancellor Olaf Scholz have won an election in the eastern German state of Brandenburg. They gained a narrow edge over a growing far-right party.

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,