A German regional election saw the spectre of the far-right rise again, writes Luke Harding.
In the end, the result was as bad as everyone had feared. Germany's neo-Nazis pulled off a widely anticipated electoral coup last night, with the far-right winning 7.3 % of the vote during elections yesterday in the north east state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
The NPD comfortably exceeded the 5 % hurdle necessary to win seats. It will now sit in the state's regional assembly in Schwerin for the first time. This is the second time that the NPD has got into a regional parliament in three years, confirming fears that the party is now an established part of the political landscape, especially in Germany's depressed former communist east.
This morning's German papers, reporting on the poll and yesterday's election in Berlin, gave a gloomy reaction. Der Tagesspeigel said there was no point in pretending that the NPD's voters - most of them under the age of 30 - had somehow been tricked into voting for a bunch of unashamed racists. "Whoever voted for this party, knew what they were doing," the paper said.
The Berliner Zeitung conceded that the "real winner" of yesterday's election was the NPD's leader in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Udo Pastörs. The fact that other parties treat him as a "pariah" merely helps his cause, the paper said, adding: "Nobody had so many cameras and microphones thrust at him".
Read the full dispatch.
