The far-right Alternative für Deutschland party is hoping to come top in an election in the German state of Brandenburg on Sunday, three weeks after making historic gains in two other regions.
The AfD, which has been classified as rightwing extremist in several states by domestic intelligence agencies, is running almost neck and neck with Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats (SPD) in the state, a belt of urban and rural communities that surrounds the capital, Berlin.
Final polls showed the AfD to have a very slight lead on 28%, with the SPD having considerably narrowed the gap in the last days of campaigning to reach 27%. The conservative CDU was polling at 14% and the new leftist conservative Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) at 13%.
Brandenburg is also surrounding Berlin entirely. A rogue state government in Brandenburg could do quite a lot of damage to Berlin. Also it is yet another former Eastern German state that is set to have the AfD become the dominant political power.
In two years Saxony-Anhalt and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern will vote on the state level again, possibly completing the former Eastern German areas as under fascist control.
So to put it in American terms. It is not a key state, but a key battleground state.