Chancellor Angela Merkel's ruling coalition caught a breather Sunday as its main parties stemmed a surge by Germany's far-right populists in two elections in the former communist east.

The euroskeptic, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD),trailed the incumbent Social Democrats by about 4 percentage points in the eastern state of Brandenburg, according to official results. In neighboring Saxony, Merkel's Christian Democrats led the AfD by around the same margin.

The narrow victories in the two states may for now stave off a deeper political crisis in the 17-month-old governing coalition that had been bickering over issues from environment to gender and wealth gaps and suffered heavy losses in EU elections earlier this year. But at the same time, both coalition parties said the results showed some of their shortcomings.