AfD Faces Electoral Test

The far-right AfD party faces its first electoral test after huge protests swept across Germany against the anti-immigration group over revelations of debates about mass expulsions of immigrants.

Over a million people have marched in recent days in cities from Hamburg to Dresden to Stuttgart in protest at Alternative for Germany and hundreds of thousands poured into the streets again.

The 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 "non-assimilated citizens" at a Potsdam meeting with extremists.

That vote in eastern Thuringia for a district administrator post is the first election since the outrage over the meeting.

The vote in the Saale-Orla district -- in a state that is one of the AfD's strongholds -- pits the party's Uwe Thrum in a run-off against the conservative CDU's Christian Herrgott.

Thrum came in top with 45.7 percent in the first round while Herrgott obtained only 33.3 percent.

If Thrum prevails, it would notch yet another victory for the AfD, which last June secured its first district administrator position, also in Thuringia, and its first town mayor in July in neighboring Saxony-Anhalt.

Nationwide opinion polls put the AfD in second place after the conservatives, and well above Chancellor Olaf Scholz's Social Democrats.

A first poll since the protests showed support for the anti-immigration party slipping 1.5 percentage points.

But 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 -- Saxony and Thuringia -- have been classified as a "confirmed" extremist organization by Germany's domestic intelligence agency.