BERLIN (AFP) - The extreme right may have seen their support surge in regional elections in two former Communist states in eastern Germany but analysts concluded that the results were better than expected for Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
With their main opponents on a national level, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), failing to capitalise, Schroeder's Social Democrats (SPD) lost votes yet still emerged as the strongest party in Brandenburg, the giant state surrounding Berlin.
In Saxony, the SPD recorded their lowest score ever in a state election, according to provisional results, dropping from 10.7 percent to 9.8 percent, and yet are likely to enter a ruling coalition in the state after the CDU lost its absolute majority, shedding 17 percentage points to fall to 41.1 percent.
The SPD has suffered a string of beatings at the polls, with two years to go before the next national poll in September 2006.
Yet Sunday's results bucked pre-election forecasts that Schroeder's party risked being harshly punished by voters in the east, who are hit hardest by a tough programme of economic reforms introduced by Schroeder, according to the left-leaning Der Tagesspiegel newspaper.
"A glance at the share of the vote, which in Saxony and Brandenburg is better than feared, showed how things could now go: not always in the same direction," said an editorial entitled "Signs of a turnaround".
The SPD campaigned hard in Brandenburg and emerged with 31.9 percent of the vote, down more than seven percent from its score in the 1999 elections, but comfortably enough to remain the strongest party in what is likely to be a coalition with the CDU and possibly the former communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS).
The charismatic state premier of Brandenburg, Matthias Platzeck, was being hailed as the SPD's saviour by the press on Monday.
"Platzeck's Victory," said a front-page headline in the top-selling Bild tabloid and Der Tagesspiegel said "Platzeck rescues the SPD".
Platzeck said he had not hidden the truth from the electorate that his party's economic reform package would be a bitter pill to swallow.
"As the weeks went by, we didn't budge from our position, and so people eventually began to discuss the issues, and the atmosphere changed," he said on Monday before entering talks with the PDS which became the second power in Brandenburg, overtaking the CDU.
The neo-Nazi National Democratic Party (NPD) campaigned on opposition to the economic reforms in areas with high unemployment and in Saxony their approach bore fruit, as they surged to 9.2 percent from just 1.4 percent five years ago.
The success of the far-right German People's Party (DVU) in Brandenburg was more modest, but it too improved its score to 6.1 percent from 5.3 percent the last time at the polls.
Germany's past means that the success of the NPD, which the government has tried to ban, will grab headlines around the world. Yet on a domestic level, commentators dismissed their score and that of the DVU as a protest vote that would never be repeated on a national level.
"The scores of the DVU and NPD may scare many, and there is cause for worry, but not panic," said Der Tagesspiegel. "In Germany, there is and always has been potential for extremists from the right... But they are and remain without political influence."
However across Germany, a wave of protests against the government's economic reforms were set to continue Monday evening.