Today's Edition
POTSDAM, Germany (DPA)
Voting is under way on Sunday in Brandenburg, the state surrounding Berlin, with attention on whether the far right will secure the most support for the second time in a month, or if the Social Democrats (SPD) will come out on top.
The SPD is the party of the beleaguered Chancellor Olaf Scholz, but also of Brandenburg's popular state leader, Dietmar Woidke.
Brandenburg is the only state in former East Germany to be continually ruled since 1990 by the SPD, although it has governed in coalitions with different parties.
Woidke, an affable 62-year-old agricultural engineer, has had the state's top job for the last 11 years.
Partly thanks to Woidke's personal popularity, the SPD has closed a gap of about five to six percentage points in the polls with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and made it a neck-and-neck race.
The AfD is classified by the domestic intelligence agency in Brandenburg as a suspected right-wing extremist group.
A poll released on Thursday by public broadcaster ZDF showed the AfD at 28%, with the SPD pulling 27% of the vote. In an earlier poll from another public broadcaster ARD, the far-right party was at 28% to the SPD's 26-27%.
The ZDF poll showed the Christian Democrats (CDU), which are the main opposition party on the federal level, winning 14% in Brandenburg while a new populist party, the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) stood at 13%.
That party, which entered the political scene only a few months ago, did very well in its first elections in Thuringia and Saxony on September 1.
It combines left-wing social policy with a hardline anti-immigration and anti-Ukraine funding stance.
