(ANSA-AP) - BERLIN, 01 SEP - Two states in eastern Germany
are holding elections that could bring big gains for a far-right
party, further destabilize Chancellor Angela Merkel's national
government and highlight continuing cracks in German unity
nearly 30 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Voters in Saxony, a region of around 4.1 million people
bordering Poland and the Czech Republic, and neighboring
Brandenburg, which has 2.5 million inhabitants and surrounds
Berlin, elect new state legislatures on Sunday. The formerly
communist east has become a stronghold for the 6-year-old
Alternative for Germany, or AfD, which is hoping for a possible
first-place finish in at least one state. Saxony has been
governed since German reunification by Merkel's Christian
Democratic Union and Brandenburg by the center-left Social
Democrats, its partners in the national government. (ANSA-AP)
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