A leading far-right party posted strong gains in a regional election in eastern Germany today, profiting from a weak economy there and discontent with Chancellor Angela Merkel's government in Berlin.
A television exit poll showed the National Democratic Party (NPD), which the government has likened to the early Nazi Party and tried to ban, won 6.5 per cent of the vote in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, a northeastern state on the Baltic Sea which borders Poland.
If confirmed that result would allow the NPD, which advocates closing German borders to immigrants, to enter the regional parliament, making Mecklenburg-Vorpommern the third state in the ex-communist east with far right representation in its assembly.
The exit poll, from ARD public television, showed the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) winning 28.5 per cent of the vote in the state, the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) 30 per cent and the reformed communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) 18 per cent.
That should allow the SPD and PDS, who have ruled in coalition in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern for the past eight years, to remain in government - a blow to Ms Merkel, whose CDU was given a solid chance of seizing power.
In a separate election in the German capital and city-state of Berlin, the SPD under popular Mayor Klaus Wowereit remained the largest party at 31 per cent.
The result should allow Mr Wowereit - who won admirers in 2001 by outing himself with the words "I'm gay and that's a good thing" - to continue to rule alongside the PDS or perhaps strike a three-way coalition that also includes the Greens. His victory came despite what critics say was a failure during his first term to tackle Berlin's crippling €60 billion debt-load and jobless rate of over 17 per cent.
In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the state where Ms Merkel has her local parliamentary constituency and where she welcomed US President George W. Bush for a barbecue of wild boar back in July, the economy is even weaker. Nearly one in five inhabitants is without work and in some areas, the jobless rate hovers above 30 per cent.
Like other states in the former east, it has seen many of its citizens leave in search of jobs. Its population has shrunk by some 15 per cent since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Those conditions have provided fertile ground for the NPD, whose leaders have played down Nazi responsibility for World War Two and expressed doubts about the extent of the Holocaust.
In Mecklenburg-Vorpommern they have couched their more radical views behind attacks against immigration and globalisation, appealing to the have-nots of the depressed east.
After today, the NPD will hold seats in the state assemblies of Mecklenburg and Saxony.
Another far-right party, the German People's Union (DVU), holds seats in Brandenburg. Neither party is a threat at the national level.
The NPD won just 1.6 per cent of the vote in last year's federal election, far below the levels that parties like France's far-right National Front have registered.