The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) secured big victories in eastern states that held local elections on Sunday, according to the latest official results.
In the state of Brandenburg, which surrounds the national capital Berlin, the AfD garnered the largest vote share at 25.7%. That is an increase of 9.8 percentage points compared to the election five years ago. The conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) and Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats (SPD) followed in second and third place.
In the local polls in neighbouring Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the AfD ousted the CDU from the top spot. The AfD got 25.6% of the vote, which means it almost doubled its share compared to the last local elections. The CDU came in second place at 24%.
The AfD was also projected to have made significant gains in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, which like Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern were part of the former East Germany.
In eight of Germany's 16 states, local elections for district councils and city halls were held on Sunday alongside ones for the European Parliament. The AfD saw its popularity surge in the vote for the EU-wide legislature, too, coming in second behind the CDU/CSU centre-right alliance.
The strong showing comes despite a string of recent scandals over senior AfD members' alleged links to Russia and China. The party was even expelled from the far-right Identity and Democracy group in the European Parliament for being too toxic.
But the AfD came away empty handed in run-off elections in Thuringia, where AfD candidates were seeking the district administrator post in nine different municipalities.
A neo-Nazi activist, Tommy Frenck, collected 30.5% of the vote in the district of Hildburghausen in Thuringia but was defeated by Sven Gregor from the conservative Free Voter party. Frenck is nationally known in Germany for organizing a series of large neo-Nazi concerts.