The Alternative for Germany party’s success in two state elections has piled new pressure on Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s fractious government and left the country’s main opposition party facing political contortions to find a way to govern a pair of eastern regions without involving the far right party. Alternative for Germany, or AfD, became the first far-right party to win a state election in post-World War II Germany in Thuringia on Sunday. In neighboring Saxony, it finished only just behind the mainstream conservative Christian Democratic Union, which leads the national opposition. Voters punished the three parties in Scholz’s governing coalition, which took well under 15% of the vote between them.
