BERLIN
\nThe far-right AfD party suffered a narrow electoral defeat on Sunday after huge protests swept across Germany against the anti-immigration group over revelations of debates about mass expulsions of immigrants.
\nA candidate from the mainstream center-right CDU won a slim victory over an AfD challenger in a run-off in eastern Thuringia for a district administrator post.
\nOver a million people have marched in recent days in cities from Hamburg to Dresden to Stuttgart in protest at the Alternative for Germany party and hundreds of thousands poured into the streets again on Saturday and Sunday.
\nThe wave of mobilization was sparked by a January 10 report by investigative outlet Correctiv, which revealed that AfD members had discussed the expulsion of immigrants and \u201cnon-assimilated citizens\u201d at a Potsdam meeting with extremists.
\nSunday\u2019s run-off vote in eastern Thuringia for a district administrator post was the first election since the outrage over the meeting.
\nAfter a first round vote in which the AfD\u2019s Uwe Thrum topped the polls in the Saale-Orla district, he garnered 47.6 percent in the deciding round against 52.4 percent for CDU candidate Christian Herrgott.
\nBoth the CDU and the center-left SPD heaved a sigh of relief at the result.
\nThe leader of the CDU\u2019s Thuringia branch Mario Voigt thanked voters for joining hands to \u201cbeat the purported Alternative,\u201d while his SPD counterpart Georg Maier said the large voter turnout and mobilization of the civil society had led to the \u201cvery important result.\u201d
\nThe AfD had been hoping to notch up another victory after having secured its first district administrator position last June, also in Thuringia, and its first town mayor in July in neighboring Saxony-Anhalt.
\nNationwide opinion polls put the AfD in second place after the conservatives, and well above Chancellor Olaf Scholz\u2019s Social Democrats.
\nA first poll since the protests showed support for the anti-immigration party slipping 1.5 percentage points.
\nBut the far-right party still tops surveys in three eastern states which are due to hold regional elections in September, even though local branches of the party in two of them \u2014 Saxony and Thuringia \u2014 have been classified as a \u201cconfirmed\u201d extremist organization by Germany\u2019s domestic intelligence agency.
\nThe classification gives the agency more powers to monitor the branches, and had been accorded because of the AfD\u2019s efforts to undermine democracy and for its anti-immigrant rhetoric.
\nThe AfD also said that it has gained 1,900 new members since January 10, when the Correctiv report was published.
\nIn his regular video address released Saturday, Scholz for the second week in a row urged the population to stand up against extremists.
\n\u201c\u2019Never again\u2019 is not only directed at the state. \u2018Never again\u2019 requires everyone\u2019s vigilance. Our democracy is not God-given, it is man-made. It is strong when we support it. It needs us when it is attacked,\u201d he said.
\nAt a weekend anti-Afd protest in Stuttgart, 56-year-old Wolfgang Nagel said that in many European countries \u201cpeople are looking to turn back the clock and politicians are adopting an inward-looking discourse, focusing on their own nation and their own people.\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s not the right way to go. It\u2019s the road that leads to war… This nationalism has to go.\u201d
\nMargrit Walter, 60, speaking at the same demonstration, said she was there to make a stand for her grandchildren.
\n\u201cI don\u2019t want us to live in a world of Nazis. It\u2019s important to rise up against the extreme right.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BERLIN The far-right AfD party suffered a narrow electoral defeat on Sunday after huge protests swept across Germany against the anti-immigration group over revelations of debates about mass expulsions of immigrants. A candidate from the mainstream center-right CDU won a slim victory over an AfD challenger in a run-off in eastern Thuringia for a district […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384022,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-384004","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n