San Francisco Frontiers - Germany's far-right AfD celebrates another state election win

"We are the strongest force and have reached the mainstream of the population," said jubilant AfD co-leader Alice Weidel after the first results came in for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania state.

"We have displaced the CDU as the people's party," she later added, referring to the centre-right party of embattled Chancellor Friedrich Merz that was hovering around a historic low of five percent in the region.

The AfD scored more than 37 percent against about 35 for the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) of state premier Manuela Schwesig, who had hoped for a last-minute comeback after recently closing the gap with the anti-immigration AfD.

Schwesig nevertheless looked likely to remain in office as a three-way coalition of her SPD with two other left-wing parties -- the Greens and the hard-left Die Linke -- appeared headed for a majority.

The other national AfD boss, Tino Chrupalla, described his party's success -- which came two weeks after an AfD triumph in Saxony-Anhalt state -- as a "sensational result", adding that "we clearly have a mandate to govern".

The AfD's hopeful for state premier, former radio host Leif-Erik Holm, 56, immediately claimed that mandate. "We will, of course, invite all parties," he said at the AfD's election party in the state capital Schwerin.

But he also acknowledged that "it's difficult to form a government" as none of the other major parties are willing to form a coalition with the AfD.

- 'Changing times' -

Thomas Pfetzner, a local AfD party member, was nonetheless jubilant about the outcome.

"It is fantastic, I would say," he told AFP. "We would have liked a bit more, of course. But it is a fantastic result. I mean, we more than doubled our vote -- everything is fine.

"You should certainly cooperate with a democratic force that has nearly 40 percent of the vote, and naturally, you should talk to that democratic force."

AfD politicians, functionaries and supporters toasted the win with mugs of beer at a pub in Schwerin, the state capital.

The crowd jeered Merz, whose CDU crashed to just over five percent of the vote, barely scraping back into the state parliament.

Jan-Phillip Tadsen, an AfD MP in the state parliament, told AFP that Merz's stumbles and failures to push through promised reforms -- including a crackdown on immigration -- had helped fuel his party's surge across Germany.

"I believe these election results are a sign of the changing times across Germany," Tadsen told AFP just after cheering the latest vote tally. "We've achieved a level of strength here in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania that society at large can no longer ignore."

Holm, born in Schwerin, completed an apprenticeship as an electrician and studied economics, before he worked for years as a radio presenter for public broadcaster NDR and several private stations.

Holm joined the AfD during its founding phase and assumed the state chairmanship in 2013. He was elected to the state parliament in 2016 and has been a member of the national parliament since 2017.

If he were to lead an AfD government, Holm has promised to build a state deportation centre for rejected asylum seekers and ban gender-inclusive language in public administration.

Unlike in some other German states, the AfD's state branch in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is not under surveillance by the domestic intelligence service BfV as a suspected right-wing extremist group.

Y.Harris--SFF