The Alternative for Germany (AfD) was on track on Sunday to become the first far-right party to win a regional election in Germany since World War Two, projections showed, but was almost certain to be excluded from power by rival parties.
The AfD was set to win 33.1% of the vote in the state of Thuringia, comfortably ahead of the conservatives' 24.3%, broadcaster ZDF's projection showed. In the neighbouring state of Saxony, the conservatives led on 31.9%, around half a percentage point ahead of the AfD.
With a year to go until Germany's national election, the results look punishing for Social Democrat Chancellor Olaf Scholz's coalition. All three parties lost votes, with junior partners, the Greens and Free Democrats, on the cusp of missing the 5% threshold needed to stay in parliament.
The campaign's final week was overshadowed by the killing of three people at a festival in the city of Solingen in a knife attack, allegedly by an illegally resident Syrian national whom authorities had failed to deport. The anti-immigration AfD may have drawn momentum from the tragedy.
"This is a requiem for the coalition," said the AfD's joint leader Alice Weidel. "The coalition should ask itself whether it can continue to govern at all."
The left populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which like the AfD wants less immigration and an end to arming Ukraine, came third in both states just eight months after its founding.
"That has never happened before in German history," said Wagenknecht, a former Communist after whom the party is named.
With all parties having ruled out working with the AfD, the BSW could be crucial to forming a stable government in the two states, which lag western Germany economically more than three decades after reunification.
The disastrous result for Scholz's coalition could further stoke conflict within an already fractious coalition in Berlin as all three parties seek to assert their identity ahead of next year's national election.
For Weidel, her party's strong performance in both states was evidence that it was no longer possible to keep her party out of power.
"The voters want the AfD in government", she said. "Without us, a stable government is not possible."
Bodo Ramelow, the premier of Thuringia, whose Left party was battered despite his personal popularity, said all democratic parties now had to work together.
"I am not fighting the conservatives. I am not fighting the BSW. I am fighting the normalisation of fascism," he said.
