The far right could be on the brink of its first election victory in a state known as the bastion of Germany's social democrats. Brandenburg, close to Berlin, has been governed by Chancellor Olaf Scholz's centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) ever since German reunification.

The victory gives Scholz, who is struggling to hold his fractious three-party coalition together, a reprieve — at least for the time being. His approval ratings have hit record lows, and he was even asked not to campaign in Brandenburg due to his unpopularity with voters.

The SPD, which has governed the state surrounding the capital Berlin since reunification in 1990, scored 30.9% of the vote, ahead of the far-right Alternative for Germany on 29.2%, according to provisional official results.

Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats appear to have held off a strong challenge from the far-right Alternative for Germany to retain power in the eastern region of Brandenburg, sparing the chancellor and his party another embarrassing electoral setback.

German voters head to regional elections on Sunday in a formerly communist eastern state where the far-right AfD party is narrowly ahead in the polls. In the state election in Brandenburg, the AfD hopes to replicate the strong gains it made in the east three weeks ago when it won a parliamentary vote in Thuringia and came a close second in Saxony.